We are excited to announce that during the month of May 2019, Purchasing will launch its new, fully automated, electronic contract review tool.
The newly designed system will afford campus partners key features such as:
- Visibility to the Contract Status
- Repository of Contracts at a departmental level
- Electronic signatures via DocuSign
- Faster processing times
The current contract review process is paper dependent and less efficient if the one and only Hays Poole decides he needs a week vacation from the office! A process that has not changed much in its 30 year offering on campus, we are celebrating the sustainability and cost saving measures this system will put into place.
Users will be able to access the tool by visiting the Contract Review web page as they have historically done or access it from the Contract Review tile on the Financial System or Employee Self Service Home Page in the MyPack Portal. Logging in with your unity ID, the system will be able to capture who is initiating the contract for review and what department is responsible for monitoring the contract. Users will be asked to upload their contract into the system at the time of submission, eliminating the need to email, fax, campus mail or deliver the contract in person. From there, Hays will be able to negotiate with the supplier using the tool and route the document for internal approvals. Users will be able to see exactly where the contract is at during the contract review and negotiation process. This visibility has not been available previously and we are excited for users to be able to monitor the progress of the contract.
When negotiations are complete and both parties have signed using DocuSign, users will be able to view and access their contracts and the contracts for their entire department in the portal. This will assist users with managing the approved contract. If an employee were to separate from the University, this functionality also allows someone else in the department to take over managing the contract.
An anticipated benefit of this new tool is faster processing times. The automation of the system and how we deliver the contracts to be signed – both internally and externally – should speed up the contract processing time. And now that we no longer print the documents to be redlined by hand – our office is making great strides with the sustainability of this project. No longer printing out contracts allows us to save 30,000 trees per year!
BEFORE
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We hope that you find the tool easy to navigate and use. If you have questions about the process, please contact Hays Poole in our office for further discussion.