Bryn Mawr Streamlines Procurement With JAGGAER
Customer Profile
Bryn Mawr College is a prestigious women’s liberal arts college located in Pennsylvania and is one of the Seven Sisters Colleges. The school has approximately 1,300 undergraduate students, 450 graduate students and 156 full-time faculty members.
Challenges
Limited visibility into spending, combined with no centralized management of purchasing processes, created the perfect procurement storm for Bryn Mawr. The majority of ordering and invoicing was conducted manually by individual staff members who, in some instances, were selecting their own vendors without notifying the purchasing department. As a result, invoices weren’t always getting to the purchasing department for prompt payment — negating any hopes for supplier discounts. In extreme cases, suppliers stopped doing business with the school due to nonpayment. It’s hard to pay the bill without an invoice. The college’s ability to negotiate better contracts with suppliers was hindered by the lack of insight into what products were being purchased and how much money was spent with various vendors, as well as some technology challenges.
Clearly the college needed to centralize all purchasing processes and implement an easy-to-use electronic platform that would allow the procurement and accounts payable staff to manage approvals and payments for all purchases across the institution.
Solution
After seeing JAGGAER in action at an industry conference, John Griffith, Bryn Mawr’s chief financial officer, thought the eProcurement solution could help the school automate purchasing and payments.
“We knew we had to revamp our purchasing practices to capture a more accurate picture of spending and increase contract compliance,” said Jerry Berenson, chief operating officer. “JAGGAER provided an intuitive solution that enabled us to automate our processes and embrace a more standardized approach to purchasing. We were also impressed with JAGGAER’s extensive track record of working with some of the leading educational institutions across the United States. ” Griffith and Berenson worked together to ensure that the eProcurement platform spanned the entire source-to-settle process, from purchasing to accounts payable.
“We involved the community from the beginning to gain a deeper understanding of its needs, collaborate on streamlined and consistent business processes and ensure high user adoption,” said Griffith.
Bottom Line Results
- Has approximately $ 40 million in addressable spend, including capital and services
- Achieved average savings of up to 22 percent on IT, office supplies and lab purchases in only eight months after going live with the JAGGAER solution
- Increased purchase order spending from five percent to 35 percent with a goal of 80 percent contract compliance by year end
- Now negotiating more strategic contracts with the goal of increasing overall savings
- Faculty and staff have access to an easy-to-use interface that resembles popular eCommerce sites, enabling them to quickly order supplies and comparison shop
The future
Bryn Mawr College has more visibility than ever into spend thanks to eProcurement. Faculty and staff members are embracing online shopping and leveraging comparison shopping to realize even greater savings.
The college is now taking a more strategic approach to contract negotiations, looking at ways to capitalize on spending patterns and finding ways to further decrease costs. For instance, the college recently outsourced printing and copying after determining that doing so internally cost the school approximately $ 100,000 annually.