The Board of Trustees, the President, Deans, Directors, faculty and the staff of Indiana University expects the Purchasing Department to secure the best products at the best total cost of ownership for the University while complying with all laws and policies. Therefore, we create agreements and utilize the most cost-effective consortium contracts. Ensuring that our active contracts protect the University, we provide open access to those agreements for goods and services through an digital procurement system that offers transparency to the transactions and intuitive navigation.
Our new procurement system, BUY.IU, provides the internal controls necessary to protect the interests of the University, reduces processing costs, and provides a web-based, easy to use interface for faculty and staff. Earlier procurement systems would not allow general faculty and staff access; however, BUY.IU provides faculty and staff access to on-line contract catalogs and to the general requisition system. Internal controls within the system ensure that the requested goods or services receive approval from the responsibility center's fiscal officer. Future enhancements will provide outreach to suppliers.
Strategic sourcing of major product areas provides the University with contracted best pricing, seamless digital tie-ins with our procurement system, and an efficient and effective method for faculty and staff to procure goods and services without additional interaction with the Purchasing Department. These sourcing agreements may be the result of a campus specific project, a university-wide effort to consolidate and standardize goods and services, or the result of the efforts of a consortium group such as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation-Purchasing Consortium (CICPC) or the Educational & Institutional Cooperative (E&I). In any instance, the Purchasing Department is utilizing the most cost-effective agreement by leveraging volumes whether those volumes exist at the University, state, regional or national level.
As we enter into a new generation of procurement systems, we will see aggressive use of reverse auctions, the development of strategic sourcing agreements for niche goods and services, and greater benchmarking efforts to ensure we are securing the best total cost of ownership in our agreements.
Simply put, we strive to respond to the University's needs by creating the best possible contracts, building all fiscal and policy controls into systems in an unobtrusive manner and allowing faculty and staff to buy from those contracts without further purchasing activity.