JAGGAER One Contracts allowed a small team to manage US$100 million worth of contracts more easily and support leadership decision-making with transparent analytics.
With JAGGAER Contracts
$100 million
managed
1000
platform users
90%
adressable spend through JAGGAER
Executive Summary
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) needed to streamline and modernize the creation, storage and management of contracts throughout their lifecycle. By implementing JAGGAER Contracts, the institution created for the first time a centralized contract repository with clear visibility and analytics, which help the institution remain compliant with state regulations and support decision makers with key information.
The Vice Chancellor of Finance Administration has been very pleased with the reports generated in JAGGAER that demonstrate how we’re managing contracts, reducing risk for the campus, bringing value, and eliminating redundancies.
Michael Logan, Director of Procurement Services, UNCG
About the University of North Carolina at Greensboro
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro is a public research university and one of 17 separate educational bodies within the University of North Carolina System. It is known for its diverse and challenging academic programs as well as its commitment to research, innovation, and community engagement.
Business Challenge
Set up a single central contract repository and contract management system for easy management by a small team.
Why JAGGAER
Reduce time to locate contracts and author and review new ones; enable the university to meet its regulatory obligations on sourcing.
With JAGGAER Contracts, the university now houses all contracts in one central repository and has:
- Managed 90% of addressable spend through JAGGAER
- Increased compliance with state of NC requirements
- Eliminated redundancies through precise spend tracking
From Scattered Sources to a Central Contract Repository
With an operating budget of US$450 million per year, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) sees around half of that amount tied to procurement. A compact team of seven staff members manages procurement operations. “We are responsible for all the acquisition of the goods and services required to keep the university running, the purchasing card program, contracting, and supplier relations,” says Michael Logan, Director of Procurement Services at UNCG. “The whole process, from beginning to end.”
Until recently, the contracting aspect of these processes was very challenging; there was no central repository for the team to manage contracts easily. Instead, they were scattered across multiple locations on various shared drives, and in local files. With up to 300 new contracts per year, this created a significant problem.
“Sometimes the contract would come in through a requisition, sometimes it wouldn’t. We might have assumed that a contract existed, but without a central repository, we had to reach out to specific departments to discuss the situation and look for the contract. It was a painful and time-consuming process,” Michael says. For older sourcing relationships, the probability that the team would find the final, executed contract, rather than an earlier draft, was only fifty-fifty.
The university also needed better visibility to adhere to state regulations more easily and proactively manage the University contracts. “Sometimes, we deal with contracts that have evergreen clauses. That means if nobody notices, it auto-renews. So, we needed to reduce risk for the campus but also give our team and senior leadership a clear overview of all contract-related activities,” Michael explains.
Time to Think Strategically and Get Proactive on Contract Renewals
The small procurement team can handle its workload largely thanks to the university’s long-standing relationship with JAGGAER. In fact, 14 out of 17 UNC System institutions use JAGGAER One, all in their own way. But UNCG took full advantage of all the platform’s capabilities with 1,000 users in multiple locations relying on its end-to-end functionality.
What started over a decade ago with eProcurement has steadily grown to include Invoicing, Supplier Management, Sourcing and, Contracts. This trust in each JAGGAER offering was based on existing and clearly visible results. For example, in 2011, only about 13% of the addressable spend went through JAGGAER. As adoption and expansion of all JAGGAER capabilities grew within UNCG, this number reached 90%, with the remaining 10% covering P-card or reimbursement transactions. “When we saw the need to address our contracting problem, we knew that broadening to JAGGAER Contracts was the way to go,” Michael says.
Following a close collaboration with a JAGGAER implementation partner, Groves & Company, the team began creating a central repository almost immediately, starting with all the strategic contracts. Now, this compact Procurement team can manage them all, including the ones with evergreen clauses.
“When expiration dates come up, we can now alert the budget holders on campus, and we can be proactive instead of reactive. We’ve got enough time and room to think strategically and make decisions about renewal, sourcing, and so on,” Michael explains.
Reducing Risk, Ensuring Compliance, and Eliminating Redundancy
A central, visible repository for all strategic contracts is just one of many benefits realized across UNCG. Crucially, the university can ensure that it is complying with regulations and guidelines mandated by the state. Also, with JAGGAER analytics tools, it’s possible to track total spend and see how much of it is not yet under contract, with the added benefit of spotting redundancies. For example, it’s now much easier to notice several competing software purchases that could, instead, be covered by just one product. And, according to Michael, university leaders love the reporting capabilities in JAGGAER One. “The Vice Chancellor of Finance Administration has been very pleased with the reports that demonstrate how we’re managing contracts, reducing risk for the campus, bringing value, and eliminating redundancies.”
What’s more, it’s much easier to identify, track, and report the university’s diverse supplier spending to the NC HUB—North Carolina’s Historically Underutilized Business Program, which promotes supplier diversity. Promoting diverse businesses is made easy because their HUB status is clearly visible in JAGGAER.
Many campus employees have also seen benefits. When they want to create a new contract, they simply need to fill out a simple request form inside JAGGAER Contracts and Michael’s team takes over. They redline and review it, make sure the sourcing is conducted appropriately, set up the contract in the system, and include signature fields via an Adobe Sign integration. This also supports the university’s sustainability goals by saving resources and preventing waste.
“The feedback from stakeholders has been fantastic because it’s much more efficient than passing around multiple paper copies and trying to figure out who has the latest or correct version.”
JAGGAER Contracts AI, which the team is currently testing, is helping speed up and simplify this process even further. They have already seen incredible efficiencies when reviewing and redlining contracts. Tasks that used to take three hours are now being executed in three minutes, with AI highlighting sections that match the university’s standard clauses as well as those that need attention.
Michael and his team are looking forward to further improvements. “We are a JAGGAER campus, so we’re always thinking about what else it offers that we could build upon to continue automating and streamlining how we operate, as well as reducing risk and bringing more efficiency, savings, and visibility for the campus,” he states. “We’re constantly analyzing the modules we have, but also what JAGGAER may potentially be offering in the future.”
Conclusion
JAGGAER Contracts has dramatically improved the efficiency of the procurement department at UNCG, as well as the leadership’s visibility over campus spending. Processes are simpler, faster, and interconnected within one platform.
“We can now have all the contracts housed in one system and can effectively manage and execute them. But, because the contract module is within JAGGAER One, we’re able to tie the requisition to the PO, to the contract, to the invoice, to the check.” It’s become a smooth journey, all on one platform.
