AUPN Achievements

The Australian Universities Procurement Network has been a significantly successful collaborating group which, through the efforts of volunteers drawn from many universities, secured a $6 million grant from DEEWR to provide a national benchmarking programme to 29 Australian universities.

From a modest financial start, the AUPN initiative has returned significant positive benefits to the HE sector. This has taken the form of rebates on Mitsubishi vehicles, discounting of universal gases commodities and significant savings in overhead costs of tender (as demonstrated by the national gases tender). The AUPN also identified opportunities for savings through the stationery price benchmarking pilot and business process improvements.

It is estimated that there has been in excess of $1.5 million in savings and reduced overhead costs in the first three years of operation. The savings arising from more competitive pricing in industrial gases are also evident.

The AUPN Executive Committee recognised that it could make an important contribution to the development of knowledge and the nature of procurement in universities and thus in 2005, initiated a price benchmarking pilot project in conjunction with HES and Purchasing Index, which could have the potential to underpin the development of aggregated and collaborative purchasing. The subsequent ANHEP Benchmarking Programme was an extremely successful initiative with 29 universities participating over three years. The potential savings identified ranged from $40.7 million (against average prices) to $138.2 million (against lowest prices) on just ten categories.

Between March 2007 and October 2009, the AUPN has hosted 55 workshops and meetings. These have been both in support of the ANHEP Benchmarking initiative and for the development of the AUPN and procurement across the sector. The workshops have been successful in encouraging discussion not only between universities but also between Procurement and other departments such as HR, Finance and IT.

In 2010, the Executive and Standing Committees contributed many hours into the restructuring of the Network with almost 50 teleconferences and meetings in order to bring the real value of the network to the sector. 2011 is buidling on this foundation and new initiatives are being presented through the Travel workshops, reviews of collaborative agreement initiatives, working with bodies such as CIPSA and the APCC and extensive work being put into the Toolboxes to promote the underlying culture of sharing.

2011 was active on many fronts as the Standing Committees and Working Groups initiated and investigated a range of ways the AUPN can add value, create savings and encourage initiatives. Working with Universities Australia, HES brought in the experts from the AUPN universities to advise and guide discussions with Qantas for a potential sector-wide agreement. Thirty-seven universities had their say in what they wanted from the Airlines industry and this is being carried through into 2012 for the AUPN universities and other airline possibilities.  Funding has been made available to 13 recipients for training and development opportunities and generous discounts have been made available for conferences, forums, training and workshops. A new Standing Committee was formed to establish the governance and processes by which the AUPN consider possible Collaborative Agreements across the AUPN universities or regionally. Visa Management has gained substantial support and experts from HR and Finance have offered their services to work with the AUPN to take this forward. 2012 will be a very interesting year.