When Christopher Rust came to Connecticut College as the director of purchasing in the spring of 2017, he was faced with a challenge: the private liberal arts college with just shy of 2,000 students had a decentralized procurement environment.

"They did not have an e-procurement platform. They were highly decentralized in their procurement practices," he says. "Buyers could purchase from whomever and whenever if they had the funds available in the department budget." This type of off-contract spending took time as buyers searched catalogs and the Internet for products, sometimes not getting the best bang for the buck by buying products from suppliers that didn’t have contracts with the college.

But Rust came to Connecticut College with ideas for solutions and the experience to implement his ideas. While working at a previous institution, he introduced e-procurement—an Internet-based procurement and sourcing platform designed to improve the efficiency and transparency of the purchasing process—and he had experienced firsthand the benefits of harnessing the power of e-commerce to streamline purchasing through the platform. He developed a plan to introduce the Web-based shopping engine not only at Connecticut College but also at two nearby liberal arts institutions: Trinity College and Wesleyan University.

"Tackling e-procurement is one step in the re-visioning of the procurement department," he wrote in his business report. "Success, cost containment and procurement management often come when institutions can piggyback on the efforts of purchasing consortiums that have made the pursuit of strategic procurement part of their mission."

When buyers log on to CTW OneSource, they’re presented with a dashboard of the areas of purchasing and a search function. "Buyers can use a search feature for petri dishes, for example," Rust says. "They can then narrow down the petri dishes by a specific type, size, or utility." If a few suppliers have similar prices, buyers can choose the specific dish that meets their specifications.

After making the selection, the buyer checks out the cart, triggering an approval workflow. All purchases are approved in advance of placing an order with a supplier. Depending on the cost of the purchase, requisitions are approved by a manager up to a senior vice president. Then, when the requisition is approved, an electric purchase order is transmitted to the supplier, who typically responds with an order acknowledgement email. Each step of the procedure is tracked in real time through the platform.

To simplify the procedure, Rust likens CTW OneSource to shopping at a mall. Instead of logging on to every suppliers’ business-to-business website, buyers enter the CTW OneSource "mall." Here, they select their products at suppliers’ "storefronts." At the checkout, the selections from each supplier are combined into one purchase at the mall’s exit.

As a timesaver, buyers can access a personal dashboard that lets them see a history of the products they’ve purchased and where the purchases were made. They can also create their own shopping lists, adding efficiency to future purchases.

"Each college [in the consortium] acts as its own separate entity in purchases," Rust says. "At the end of each fiscal year, we want to take a look at our spending, do some analysis, and sit down with our supplier base as a consortium." His expectation is that increased on-contract buying coupled with the spend analysis capabilities that comes with e-procurement can provide ever greater leverage in negotiating more advantageous contracts for the three institutions.

When Rust launched his first e-procurement platform at a previous institution, he formed a strong working relationship with Carolina Biological Supply Company as a science vendor. So when he took steps to set up a platform at Connecticut College, he says it was easy for him to agree to include Carolina as a science supplier.

"The e-procurement system allows the institution to connect with a variety of vendors. The institution determines who they want in their system," explains Elizabeth Stanfield, Carolina’s B2B manager.

When an institution agrees to include Carolina as a science vendor, she says, "We work through the entire e-procurement process with the educational institution from start to finish. We go through testing to make sure the procedure is effective. We ask that they let us know when the first live order is made so we can track it and make sure the process goes as anticipated. Invoices are emailed or mailed as a rule, but if requested, we can provide portal invoicing as well."

Working with e-procurement gives the institutions more control over their internal process. Carolina has found that an e-procurement system can:

• Cut costs. Purchasing through an e-procurement platform can prevent duplicate and off-contract spending. "For companies that have contracts with us, we can link pricing back to a contract with discounted prices," Stanfield explains.
• Save time. E-procurement automates a large part of the purchasing process, which reduces time in preparing manual purchase orders and allows invoices to be entered directly in the marketplace portal.
• Improve accuracy. Orders list vendor part numbers and descriptions.
• Eliminate paperwork. Everything can be saved and stored electronically, making it easier to write and analyze purchasing practices.

Carolina is currently integrated with several e-procurement platforms that serve buyers in grades K–12 and in higher education, including Jaggaer, SAP Ariba, and Unimarket. It also offers a variety of support solutions, such as punchout and hosted catalogs and electronic requisition and invoicing support. Depending on the product purchased, buyers have access to feature videos, lab and classroom safety information, safety data sheets, how-to techniques, teacher manuals, suggested classroom activities, and more.

For more information about e-procurement with Carolina, complete this form.