Varsity picks Oracle for procurement

By ADAM GIFFORD

Victoria University is set to start using Oracle electronic procurement software, after upgrading its financial software to the new Oracle 11i application platform.

"The self-service modules like procurement come fully internet-enabled, so end users can enter data through browser," said Oracle national sales director Robert Gosling.

"It gives organisations more ability to move functions from accounting out to the user base.

"With things like procurement and web expenses, users can put all their own expense claims in online and get them processed through to the payment system."

Victoria's chief financial officer Wayne Morgan said: "The objective is to use thin clients a lot more, so we can put web-based forms out to a much wider base of users in the university."

The system runs on the Sun Solaris flavour of Unix on Oracle's 8i database, rather than its recently-released 9i version.

As well as procurement, the university has bought a specialised module which manages grants.

"It tracks money allocated from grants to research projects and acts as project management software," Mr Morgan said.

Electronic procurement is being divided into two projects - the Oracle system to cover internet purchases of more expensive items, and a purchase card system, using the mypcard.com software developed by Deloittes, to manage spending under $500.

The internet software requires authorisation before purchase, while the mypcard.com system manages the authorisation after purchase. The university has 1200 staff and an annual budget of $135 million.

"We spent about $40 million a year outside salaries. We hope to save $250,000 to $300,000 a year - a modest target," Mr Morgan said.

The migration cost about $550,000, including implementation services from Oracle Consulting.

Mr Morgan said the electronic procurement module would cost a similar amount, and should be live by March.

He said the university was also doing a $1 million infrastructure upgrade, so all departments could access the system.