Delaware Valley University delivers a more convenient buying experience

It’s why the university froze tuition for the 2020-21 school year in the wake of a pandemic that has forced many families to make hard decisions about where to spend their dollars. And it’s why the university opened its unoccupied residence halls to healthcare workers on the front lines of the battle against COVID-19 during the spring of 2020.

That spirit of service and innovation extends to the university’s procurement practices. At many colleges and universities, the procurement department is often seen as the “office of no,” with cumbersome requisition and approval processes that delay purchases and force buyers to jump through hoops. “In the ‘before times,” said William Lyle, purchasing director at DelVal, “we relied on yellow requisition forms filled out by hand. Sometimes we couldn’t read the handwriting. Sometimes the account number was wrong. And sometimes it fell behind someone’s desk never to be seen again,” he said. “Then we’d get the angry phone call,” he remembers.

In 2007, DelVal implemented ESM Purchase, a cloud-based solution that provided a new, seamless shopping experience to stakeholders across the university, along with an automated approval process to speed transactions and eliminate bottlenecks. “We are the definition of a very small school. And, with very limited resources, sometimes we have to be creative. ESM has been very helpful in getting us on the right track.”

Bill decided to pilot ESM Purchase with a handful of offices. “That took us about six months,” he recalls. “In retrospect, I don’t think I needed to be so cautious. People loved it. And when we rolled it out across campus, we didn’t hear a single complaint.” 

With ESM Purchase, DelVal was able to cut processing time for orders by at least 90 percent. And with a better understanding of who was buying what from whom, Bill had the data he needed to negotiate better contracts with suppliers. Now, buyers across the university can make smarter purchases against those negotiated contracts, greatly reducing “wildcat” spend for things like office supplies or laboratory equipmen

With that insight, Bill was also able to convince some of the university’s preferred vendors to create punch-out catalogs for DelVal. “They hesitated,” he said. “They wanted to know whether the effort would be worth it. We were able to tell them exactly how much spend they would realize and so they moved forward, assisted directly by ESM’s supplier enablement team. Since then, we’ve never looked back. It’s a very good relationship for both our vendors and for DelVal,” he said.

DelVal was founded in 1896 as the National Farm School and while it offers a comprehensive liberal arts curriculum today, it remains committed to innovative programs in agribusiness, environmental sciences, nutrition, and animal, equine, and plant sciences. That, of course, requires specialized buying, especially for essential items that suddenly became scarcer and more expensive during the novel coronavirus in 2020. “We never needed a lot of PPE, but when the pandemic hit us, we couldn’t find those items anywhere—and when we did, they were quite costly.”

“We are the definition of a very small school. And, with very limited resources, sometimes we have to be creative. ESM has been very helpful in getting us on the right track.” William Lyle, Purchasing Direct, Delaware Valley University.

Bill said. In response, the procurement office has been helping departments across campus make bulk purchases. The university is avoiding the costs associated with buying incrementally from multiple vendors and delivering goods faster.

Buyers across the university can make smarter purchases against negotiated contracts, greatly reducing “wildcat” spend for things like office supplies or laboratory equipment.

Seamless data exchange between the finance and procurement systems drives insight and supports decision making. DelVal is working with Ellucian and ESM to move to a more robust integration between Ellucian Colleague (DelVal’s ERP) and ESM Purchase that will be supported by Ellucian Ethos, an enterprise-wide platform that addresses the need for a more unified operational environment. With their two systems fully integrated, DelVal will be able to accelerate procurement processes to deliver better services.

“With the new Ellucian Ethos integration, we’ll be able to use all of the tools available to us to create seamless data exchange,” Bill said. “We’ll no longer have two sets of vendor lists that we need to maintain in both systems.” Bill is particularly excited to begin using blanket purchase order capabilities that will allow departments to draw down on authorized funds.