WHO WE WORK WITH

Universities

Deliver more value with our vast University experience

Deliver more value with our vast University experience

Procurement in Higher Education has a significant opportunity to drive value, if setup in the right way for success. We understand Universities through our work with Australian Universities Procurement Network and have deep experience across the sector. ​

We have direct experience of working with over 50% of the entire sector in Australia, and our experience gives us access to a wide range of learnings from other universities on the right operating models for procurement and category management to deliver more value through procurement. Our experience spans:​

  • Spend and Data benchmarks​
  • Procurement models​
  • Category analysis ​
  • Trends and best practice ​
  • Transactional efficiency ​
  • Category structures

Challenges leaders face in Universities

Leadership & Influence

Influence across the c-suite is often challenging with many universities struggling to gain traction and sell the benefits of procurement

Organisation

Balancing centralized vs. decentralized organisation structures to get the right balance of procurement efficiencies whilst retaining local agility and business unit understanding

People & Skills

Procurement not seen as a professional function with many other stakeholder groups involved in procurement

Process & Governance

Procurement processes need to be robust, however frameworks are often complex and seen to slow down stakeholders. Goal is to meet probity requirements whilst retaining agility

Suppliers

The high number of diverse suppliers in universities makes supplier and contract management challenging

Technology

Many universities struggle to create the business case for technology investment due to lack of visibility of spend data and benefits

How we can help

Our team across Asia Pacific have experienced higher education experts who are ready to support you to deliver more through a broad range of services.

Setting Up Procurement for Success

  • Universities are complex organisations and the way that procurement is set up is central to its success in delivering better value and efficient processes for stakeholders.

Savings Programs

  • We have deep expertise in procurement across the higher education sector and we can use this experience to identify opportunities to drive better value from specific categories or across the entire spend portfolio.

Setup Category Management

  • Many universities struggle to implement category management structures and processes due to the complexity of the organisation. We have worked with many universities to design category management that works in the context of the sector.

Provide Spend Visibility

  • We have developed a wide range of procurement analytics solutions which are used across the sector to categorise and visualise university procurement spend better – to give transparency to what we spend and to identify areas to deliver more value.

Procurement Framework

  • We have worked with many of the major universities to design procurement frameworks that are simple, efficient, adaptable and agile.

Need to deliver more through procurement & contracting?

ArcBlue is one of the Asia Pacific’s largest, dedicated procurement consultancies. Our public sector experts each have experience leading public sector procurement functions, and approach their work with passion, authenticity, innovation, accountability, and collaboration.  

Find out how ArcBlue can help you

Our Specialist Team

Team

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OUR EXPERIENCE

Strategic Category Management

We were sought to support the university's move from a reactionary administrative function to a strategic category management model and help unlock value from its suppliers.

Procurement Framework Review

We were engaged to review the procurement process and function as part of a University Strategy 2030. The university necessitated a review of their purchasing practises and the creation of a roadmap to help them achieve their long-term goals.

Category Strategy Implementation

We were engaged by the Properties & Facilities division to provide category strategy development for the Construction & Facilities Management Categories where there was historic resistance to change and the need for a coordinated approach.

Procurement Review & Capability Assessment

This Australian University went through a university-wide review including financial performance, efficiency, resourcing, and categories of spend range to ensure they were ‘future ready’.

INSIGHTS

RESOURCES & DOWNLOADS