AUSTRALIA
Since joining VU , Tiong has worked on a five-year transformation of Procurement throughout the university . Procurement comprised siloed purchasing activities across the functions of the University . “ I was brought in to transform that and centralise it over two phases ,” she notes .
The first phase involved forming a strategic procurement team to create and implement category strategies for the short , medium and long-terms . This included consolidating purchasing volume , data mining , tendering and negotiations . “ This is the strategy part of procurement ,” Tiong states . “ It had been done in a silo manner by each individual department . This could be an individual faculty or college . They would call a supplier and the product would be delivered .” Some of these ad-hoc purchases resulted in incorrect products , unmet expectations and cost creep .
Procurement in VU worked in this way for many years and it was not sustainable . “ We could not leverage the suppliers and therefore could not leverage enough savings . We could not manage the supplier performance appropriately because it had been done in such an ad-hoc manner ,” Tiong explains .
The first phase brought standardization of tendering processes , redefined policies , procedures , governance and framework , and facilitated clear understanding of spend by category . This resulted in large savings within the first 18 months .
The second phase was to centralise , streamline and introduce end to end procurement , with the establishment of the Procurement Centre of Excellence ( CoE ). eProcurement tools and systems were introduced as enablers of efficiency and reporting accuracy . This brought about streamlined processes , efficiencies , reduced paperwork and improved approval times .
This is not the first time Juliana Tiong has embarked upon a transformation of procurement . Previously , when working for defence company Thales , in the Air System Division , she worked on similar transformation . She
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