Modernizing USask's procurement practices

Currently, the university spends over $480 million annually for procuring goods and services. Many of these transactions occur at a local level within the university. To better support for the campus community, a new Procurement Policy was introduced. This policy streamlines the purchasing process through effective spend management and improved service delivery, leveraging proven industry best practices.

“The funding we received helped us introduce a new procurement policy that will modernize our procurement practices on campus, improve the user experience, and position the university to take advantage of its institutional buying power and realize bottom line savings,” said Kyle Jurgens, Manager of Enterprise Procurement at USask. “The new policy ensures that USask follows legislated requirements, including risk management, and principles that reflect transparency and fairness.”

Enterprise Procurement has also leveraged this funding to enhance their day-to-day services. This involved creating a centralized information hub where all procurement-related information can be accessed conveniently. Additionally, the team has established preferred supplier agreements with external vendors, streamlining the purchasing process for individuals and eliminating the need to search for the best deals which saves the institution both time and money.

“In the past year, we signed several preferred supplier agreements—including several province-wide contracts with the University of Regina and Saskatchewan Polytechnic—to ensure the university is getting the best value for items procured while utilizing procurement best-practices for public institutions,” said Jurgens.

Some of these agreements include office supplies, rental cars, scientific supplies, and vehicle maintenance, saving the university both time and money.

In addition to the work led by Enterprise Procurement, the ISR supported the university in transitioning units to the same budgeting platform. Not only did this simplify the budgeting and forecasting process, but it allowed for greater collaboration, a reduction in duplicate and manual processes, and additional institutional oversite.

Through ISR, USask also worked diligently to build an Enterprise Service Management (ESM) solution to facilitate incident and request management, and knowledge management that use workflow and automation to create efficiencies.

“Much of the change that has been implemented through the ISR initiative has focused on creating efficiencies and value, improving consistency and collaboration, and identifying resource savings,” says Marnie Wright, Associate Vice President, People and Chief Human Resources Officer. “Over the next year, USask will be implementing a Job Architecture framework that will improve consistency in job title standards across campus. This will ensure better compensation alignment and greater role clarity, and more visibility for career paths across campus. We have some of the best employees and we want to ensure that they have rewarding and successful careers at USask.”