E-procurement

E-procurement fund

We have used part of the £6 million e-procurement funding to establish an E-Marketplace Fund to provide grants for universities and colleges to implement an e-marketplace or develop an existing one. 

On 28 June 2010 we invited higher education institutions (HEIs) to apply for funding to implement e-marketplace systems or to further develop existing e-marketplace systems. 

We have allocated grants totalling £3,955,195 to 66 HEIs to implement a new e-marketplace (45 HEIs), or develop an existing one (21 HEIs).  Applications suggest that the extension of e-marketplaces using UMF funding will deliver significant efficiencies for the HEIs concerned.

The E-Marketplace Fund is now closed.

Generic e-marketplace

Sector contracts can be made more accessible to smaller institutions by the use of  purchasing cards through a web-based portal. This is a practical and cost-effective way of making these contracts more available, and does not require a large investment by the institution. 

We have developed a shared service feasibility study - Single Common Use E‑Cataloguing of Sector Contracts  - led by the University of Huddersfield. This model is called the Generic e‑Marketplace (GeM). 

GeM acts as the e-marketplace and contracts repository for both the higher education and further education sectors. It is owned and operated by the sector for the sector and contains only sector negotiated and approved contracts. GeM is free at the point of use.  Use of the system is restricted to authorised staff only.

Larger universities and colleges can also use GeM, even though it has been designed to cater for the requirements of smaller institutions. They may do this in addition to having their own e-marketplace.