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BEN Buys Purchasing System
The BEN Buys purchasing system along with the
Penn Marketplace, Penn's private supplier
exchange, is the University's primary buying method. Most product and service
requirements are to be satisfied using a University purchase order. Purchase orders
can only be created and issued to those suppliers
that have been added to the supplier database by Purchasing Services. When using
BEN Buys, faculty and staff are required to utilize
preferred contract suppliers
and marketplace participating suppliers
to satisfy their purchase requirements. Preferred contract suppliers enabled in the
Penn Marketplace provide most commonly ordered products and services at negotiated
"least total cost". These suppliers also provide high quality customer
service and support and
Penn specific
product and pricing promotions. Many provide next day delivery for in-stock products.
BEN Buys facilitates a seamless, end-to-end electronic process for the entire
"procure-to-pay" process, including automatic relief
of encumbrances, self-service purchasing and access and ability to process at the point
of demand. The system fosters a "paperless" environment, while making
information readily accessible to the buyer or an administrator. Authorized system
users can log on to a secure environment, browse-search-shop-buy from a large number
of the University's most commonly used preferred contract supplier online catalogs,
process an order by creating a requisition, which gets routed, approved and turned into
a purchase order electronically through Oracle's workflow. During the process of
creating a requisition, account and buyer validation takes place as well as automatic
processing for funds checking (availability of funds), identification of hazardous
materials and checks to ensure the appropriateness of equipment purchases to be charged
to sponsored research.
Final approved purchase orders are sent directly to the supplier, through
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for our
electronic trading partners or via eDocument fax service for non-EDI suppliers.
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