Achievements of the AUPN to Date

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

From a modest financial start up, 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. An opportunity of savings through the stationery price benchmarking pilot and business process improvements through promoting spend analysis projects. There has been raised awareness across the HE sector of procurement and eProcurement initiatives being undertaken by universities around the country.

It is estimated that there have been in excess of $1.5 million in tangible and other savings and overhead costs resulting from the first three years of operations. Intangible savings resulting in more competitive pricing in industrial gases, which are difficult to measure reliably without a national benchmarking project are also evident.

The AUPN Executive Committee recognised that it could make an important contribution to the development of knowledge about 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 as appropriate. The subsequent ANHEPBP initiative has been a hugely popular initiative with 29 universities participating over three years.