Value and Compliance
We continuously seek new ways to innovate and enhance our services through the adoption of industry-leading practices, collaboration with campus partners, and a commitment to excellence.
We do this while ensuring that the acquisition and management of goods and services, as well as the disposal of surplus goods, are conducted per federal, state, and university policies to protect UC and its employees, and to preserve public trust in the university.
Customer Success
We strive to be a highly valued partner for faculty and staff and to be instrumental in their success. To achieve this requires a relentless focus on relationships, people, processes and technology.
Strategic Procurement
We carefully manage the end-to-end procure-to-pay process to facilitate efficient, effective, and compliant acquisition of goods and services.
Our category management-based approach seeks to proactively address most campus procurement requirements, allowing highly efficient automated buying through tools like Bobcat Buy.
This approach also enables our staff to maximize their time spent performing value-added work, such as managing complicated or expensive procurement projects in close partnership with campus departments.
Strategic Sourcing Projects
We analyze and forecast campus requirements for goods and services and then source, negotiate and implement contracts to meet current and future business needs.
We ensure that purchases occur at the best value, from strategically sourced contracts, and that purchases can happen in a timely and efficient manner through established sources of supply. Our process for this leverages UC’s system-wide strategic sourcing efforts and GPO contracts, in addition to our internal campus sourcing efforts.
Business Contracts
We negotiate complex contracts in order to (a) limit risk to the University and (b) maximize the ability of the campus and its departments to achieve their objectives.
We manage a central repository of all campus contracts, partner with departments to ensure appropriate contract lifecycle management is in place and followed for all agreements.
Equipment Management
We ensure that campus fixed assets (i.e. equipment valued over $5,000) are appropriately tagged, accounted for and periodically inventoried in adherence to federal, state and university requirements.
Additionally, we provide accurate and timely data to fixed asset accounting to ensure that assets are accounted for and depreciated appropriately.
Surplus and Disposal
We manage the university’s inventory of surplus equipment and supplies, as well as the disposal of items that have reached end-of-life or are no longer required by a department.
Additionally, as appropriate, we inform all university departments, as well as the general public, of the availability of surplus items, thus ensuring any remaining useful value is captured through reassignment of these supplies to other departments or through sale to the public.
Essential to this program is support for the campus’s sustainability goals.
Shipping, Receiving and Distribution
We manage campus shipping and receiving services to confirm that inbound and outbound shipments of goods are professionally received, distributed to their intended department(s), and returned or shipped as appropriate while adhering to all applicable regulations.
Doing so requires us to work in close concert with UC Merced departments, laboratories, and EH&S staff to manage all inbound shipments of restricted items and controlled substances.
Warehousing
We manage warehousing services to make sure the campus maximizes the use of its limited storage space, and to ensure campus departments have access to a secure location to store appropriate inventories.
