Outcomes

The ANHEPBP provided opportunities for universities to benchmark their current procurement practices and performance outcomes for various commodity and service categories and allowed universities to identify opportunities for process improvement, the achievement of savings and cost containment.

The Programme also benchmarked the procurement function of universities including organisational, resource and process features.

The deliverables required by DEEWR as a condition of the WPP funding included the delivery of confidential individual benchmarking reports and an aggregated market report to each university participating in the associated commodity or function benchmarking exercise.

HES provided progressive staged reports to the Lead University, the University of Newcastle, and to the Grant Governance Group accompanied by the aggregated market reports for each completed sub-project. The individual analysis reports and the aggregated market reports were provided by the Service Provider, Purchasing Index Pty Ltd. The aggregated reports did not identify universities by name, assuring anonymity and confidentiality.

Workshops were held following the completion of each benchmarking exercise for the participants to promote knowledge sharing and collaboration based on the outcomes of the benchmarking. This was the ideal opportunity to identify potential savings, opportunities for collaboration and means of advancing the procurement function into the future.