- Let’s make routine purchases at York a lot more routine.
- Let’s reduce the number of steps needed to complete a purchase transaction.
- Let’s help green our campus by reducing the paper required to make a simple purchase.
If all these sound like good ideas, you’ll be happy to know that a new way of doing business at York is here…
And it’s called… Sm@rtBuy
Finance, in conjunction with PRASE, has been working on the development of an electronic purchasing system. Sm@rtBuy is York’s new on-line procurement system that will streamline purchasing at York, allowing for significant time savings for everyone currently involved in purchasing routine items. Those time savings will lead directly to reducing administrative costs, freeing up valuable staff time and budget dollars.
Close to 500 people here at York are, what we call “requisitioners”. In 2011, our requisitioners completed some 84,000 purchase transactions. Under our current paper system, it takes 20 steps to make a purchase. That translates into 1,680,000 individual steps to complete all of our purchases last year. With Sm@rtBuy, only 7 steps will be required to make a purchase. This means that when Sm@rtBuy is fully operational with all functionalities implemented, the total number of steps will reduce to 588,000 – an improvement of 65%!
But workflow is not the only winning element of Sm@rtBuy. Here are some of the other key benefits:
- One-stop shopping: With Sm@rtBuy, you are able to purchase a variety of products from office supplies, to computers, to scientific supplies, to catering just by logging in with your Passport York account.
- Lower prices: York will be better placed to leverage improved pricing by maximizing our relationships with preferred vendors on Sm@rtBuy.
- Accessible: Sm@rtBuy is accessible, should you need it, from any computer anywhere the internet connects you.
- Comparison Shopping: Sm@rtBuy allows users to compare prices from competing vendors and select the best value for the same product.
- Environmentally Friendly: Sm@rtBuy is a paperless process, so it helps reduce our carbon footprint.
To find out more about Sm@rtBuy visit the Frequently Asked Questions page or e-mail us at smartbuy@yorku.ca