Case Study

Purchasing Index (PI) was the service provider to HES who manage the AUPN (Australian Universities Procurement Network), for a 3 year government funded project to baseline, benchmark and identify opportunities across 12 common spend categories and 2 phases of benchmarking the procurement function within universities. The 12 common spend categories included: office supplies, laboratory supplies, contingency labour, telecommunications, pc’s, transaction banking fees, advertising, IT leasing, professional services, travel, multi-function devices and printing. 29 Australian universities participated in the project with an average participation of 7.5 categories per university. PI measured over AU$570M of common category spend, identifying savings opportunities of between 2.4% - 7.7% across the sector.

The procurement function benchmarking ranked universities according to value for money outcomes across the five high level areas of; procurement in the organisation, capability, performance measurement, policy and process. For both the category benchmarking and procurement function benchmarking participants were provided with an (confidential) individual market intelligence report for their university as well as an aggregate sector report which kept participants identities confidential.

Whilst the benefits of the projects focused on the identification of opportunities to universities and the sector, the project also enabled individual universities to:
 

• Baseline the category within their organisation
• Participate and understand how benchmarking works and what it can deliver
• Better understand the category scope (regarding price, performance measurement, service and vendors within the sector) and
• Provided an opportunity for many to collaborate in a sector wide procurement project.

PI did a truly professional and thorough job working with the Project, assisting universities with data collection and validation and delivering outcomes for the universities which has provided a much deeper understanding of procurement in Higher Education and opportunities for each university.

Jan Rose HES Project Director