E-ACCESS – A Resource Management Publication
Website: http://purchasing.wustl.edu
Issue #103, October 20, 2014
IN THIS ISSUE:
01. New Fisher Scientific Primary Supplier Award for Laboratory Supplies
02. Payment Term Discount Program
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1) New Fisher Scientific Primary Supplier Award for Laboratory Supplies
Most of the Washington University community is aware of the work to identify opportunities to reduce costs throughout our enterprise. The purpose of this communiqué is to announce the next contract related to our Expense Reduction Initiative.
This new Expense Reduction Initiative deals with distribution of lab supplies. A new agreement has been developed with Fisher Scientific as the primary distributor of scientific supplies, scientific equipment, and instrumentation.
This contract will provide a significant product cost savings of approximately $3,500,000 over five years for university researchers. The new contract provides the highest discounts on the items currently purchased from Fisher with consistent pricing to the entire university. Additionally, the contract includes free freight on their entire catalog offering and deep discounts on any new lab start-ups.
This new primary supplier agreement with Fisher Scientific will benefit individual customers as well as the university as a whole. The significant contractual benefits to researchers will be achieved in part by consolidating volume with the primary supplier. Therefore, we request that Fisher Scientific be considered the first-stop for all scientific supply needs.
Specifically, we encourage all exact match (same brand and item) products be purchased from Fisher in order to maximize the potential savings. The brand and product selection is always the choice of the researcher. The expectation is that if that brand is available through Fisher then Fisher is the distributor used for that purchase.
To fully support this new agreement implementation, Fisher Scientific has a dedicated Wash U sales support team available to assist users.
- Fisher Scientific Sales Representatives can be contacted with any product or technical application questions. They can facilitate supplier specialist visits, demos, and provide product samples.Debbie Stone, 314-221-4267, debbie.stone@thermofisher.com
Jeff Eissman, 314-504-0049, jeff.eissman@thermofisher.com
- Onsite Customer Service Representative – Fisher will place a dedicated customer service person at WashU to be contacted for order support, shipping questions, and any other customer service general questions. Contact information will be provided at a later date.
Should you have any questions, please contact Beth Owen, Contract Manager Liaison, at 314-935-7688 or beth.owen@wustl.edu, or Greg Mosley, Associate Director Purchasing Services, at 314-935-5927 or gmosley@wustl.edu.
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2) Payment Term Discount Program
Due to the recent university-wide efficiency initiative Resource Management and Accounts Payable have been working together to take advantage of quick payment term discounts offered by some vendors (example: 2% 10, net 30 days). With the assistance of IS&T, a new project was recently launched to production in order to properly calculate and record these vendor discounts.
Accounts Payable and IS&T have now launched the second phase of this project. This phase includes the following AIS enhancements to provide visibility of the discount information for departments during the approval process.
These new features will assist departments in taking advantage of the early pay discounts.
AP Vendor Document, AP Invoices, and Document Inquiry:
- Added ‘Potential Discount’, ‘Discounted’ or ‘Missed Discount” texts in blue to the applicable invoices next to the invoice date.
- Added Terms Rate, Days, and Net to Invoice Tab
AP Vendor Document: Added discounted amount in AP Document Status Inquiry page.
AP Invoices: Added option in Search page to process and sort the invoices with discount potential first. The system defaults this new field to ‘Y’.
Document Image Viewer:
- Added a new field in the search options to sort invoices with discount potential. The field is blank by default.
- A new field called ‘Discounted:’ has been added to the Image Summary Screen to display if a discount was taken or if there is a discount potential on the invoice.
Giving prompt attention to these invoices will ensure savings to the departments and avoid missed discounts.
Contact Lisa Gibbs with questions at 314-935-5710 or lisa.gibbs@wustl.edu
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