Reducing redundant purchases, reusing unused supplies, and cutting out unnecessary expenses

ASG Team centralizes office supply purchasing in UVAFinance

Let’s say you’re in charge of making your department’s office supply order (a process you aren’t very familiar with, because you don’t do it often), and you accidentally order a case of file folders instead of one box, and you forget entirely to order the highlighters your colleagues requested. It’s not the worst thing that could happen. Some people will be inconvenienced, and you’ll have to find a place to store the extra boxes of folders until they can be worked through, but it’s not the end of the world, right?

Of course not. But what you didn’t know is that last month, your counterpart in the suite next door ordered seven boxes of highlighters that are gathering dust, and the supplier they use is sold out of the very kind of file folder you have stacks of.

Mariah Kier, Deputy Mayor of Carruthers and ASG
Team Member, with some office supplies ready to
be delivered their new homes.

This summer, the Administrative Services Group within UVAFinance set out to make the procurement of office supplies a smarter, easier, more collaborative process. Their aim was not only reduce waste in supply ordering, but also to provide better, more efficient, and more personal service to all departments within the unit.

They started with a thorough audit of all area supplies: ASG team member Mariah Kier inventoried the storage cabinets and supply closets of all UVAFinance departments and built a database of exactly what was located where.

From there, ASG team member Connie Alexander, with expertise gained from years of work in Procurement & Supplier Diversity Services, took over as the point person for UVAFinance purchasing.

Once per month, she gathers up supply requests from each UVAFinance area. All the orders are sourced through a contract vendor (Supply Room), which results in better pricing for all units. Alexander navigates the purchasing process with ease, making recommendations, answering questions, and generally ensuring that each department gets what it needs at the best price.

Supply delivery is also centralized: the goods Alexander orders come to Kier’s front desk in Carruthers, and are then delivered or picked up without anything being misdirected or misplaced.

Another upside to the new process is that it allows UVAFinance to “shop their stash:” orders are only placed for items that aren’t already a part of the inventory in the central supply database.

Piles of over-ordered supplies have dwindled considerably since the implementation of the new process, and several supply needs have been fulfilled without even having to place an order, which, in some emergency cases, has been one of the biggest benefits.

“I was in a pinch and needed a certain size battery the other day,” said Stacey Rittenhouse, ASG team member.

“Connie was able to look in the database and find some for me right away. Normally I would’ve had to go begging from department to department,” she laughed.

After a small period of adjustment, the ASG team found that the new, streamlined process has been very well received.

“Everyone still gets what they need,” Rittenhouse remarked.

“The difference is that now, it’s easier for everyone within the departments to order, and we also save money. And it’s so much easier to analyze our spending when it’s just one amount for supplies per month,” she said.

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Questions?  Contact Connie Alexander

“It’s about customer service":UVAFinance unit pitches in to help Student Financial Services during the back to school rush

The start of every fall term is hectic in Student Financial Services (SFS), as new Hoos and their families arrive on Grounds with a multitude of questions about financial aid packages. Every year, just before and just after the start of classes, SFS receives thousands of questions from students and parents, in person, via email, and via phone.

For SFS, those two weeks are “all hands on deck.” Nobody takes a day off, nobody goes out to lunch, and everyone lends a hand on the phones. The pace is fast and the days are long as everyone strives to address student concerns accurately and quickly. SFS staffers admit it can be a challenging, even draining, time of the year.

This year, SFS got unexpected and very welcome help from UVAFinance’s new Administrative Services Group (ASG).

Made up of administrative professionals from all UVAFinance departments, ASG provides comprehensive and coordinated administrative services to all of UVAFinance. And they don’t wait for requests to come to them – they actively look for ways to help.

ASG member Mary Fields, who works in SFS, shared with her group that a “peak time” was coming for SFS, and her fellow team members were quick to offer their assistance.

“They volunteered out of thin air,” said Steve Kimata, Assistant Vice President, Student Financial Aid.

Kimata says that ASG leader Disha Venkatesan’s offer of the group’s help was most welcome, and they quickly found places for the ASG volunteers.

“We provide lunch for all of our staffers during our three busiest days,” Kimata said. “The ASG members coordinated the delivery, set up, and cleanup of lunch for our staff members. It was a simple task, but it made such a difference because we simply didn’t have a spare pair of hands to take care of it.”

Mariah Kier, who runs the front desk in Carruthers Hall, is a member of the ASG team. In her post at Carruthers Hall’s main entrance, Kier began to see an increase in student/parent traffic, some of whom were frustrated by the fact that they had to walk around the side of the building (not through it) to get to SFS. While she was already redirecting those visitors to the SFS entrance on the other side of the building, Kier felt there might be more she could do to help.

“One of Mariah’s suggestions, based on what she had been seeing, was to create new signage around Carruthers Hall to help students and parents find their way without the wrong turns,” Kimata explained.

Kier developed and posted the new signage, which had street-view pictures and a series of progressive steps to take posted along the way, and both she and SFS could tell an immediate difference in the ease with which students found the right office.

Not only that but also, Kimata armed Kier with some frequently asked questions and answers on some very basic topics that allowed her to be even more helpful and reassuring to Carruthers Hall visitors.

ASG volunteers also helped out in the SFS lobby.

Venkatesan was one of the volunteers who assisted students both in the lobby and outside the door to SFS.

“There in the lobby, we would have students come with confusion in their eyes, asking us questions, and we could direct them to where they needed to go,” she said, adding that she and fellow volunteers also helped students and parents who were standing in line to get into the SFS entrance. ASG volunteers guided students and parents who arrived after closing time know when to come back, answered simple questions and offered reassurance.

On one rainy afternoon, Venkatesan even ran back and forth under the SFS awning to alert students and parents waiting in the foyer of the arrival of their Uber ride.

A little unconventional? Yes. But as Venkatesan says, it’s all about customer service.

“We worked as a team and it wasn’t a burden to any one of us. This is a high-stress time for students and parents,” she said. “We were happy to be able to help them and soothe them a bit.”

ASG’s team effort had the same soothing effect their SFS colleagues.

“ASG’s help meant all of the SFS staff could stay in their workflow, and focus on answering student and parent questions about financial aid,” said Chris Doran, SFS Communications Manager.

Kimata agrees, adding, “It was great seeing new faces from all across UVAFinance units come down to help out.”

“They might think it wasn’t a big deal, but it made a big difference,” he said.

Conference Room Etiquette

Our shared spaces give us an opportunity to meet and work together.  Unfortunately, they can also be a source of frustration, because there's often not enough available space to meet demand, and high usage can result in packed schedules and messy spaces.

UVAFinance has implemented ground rules for using our own conference rooms and meeting spaces, with the aim of avoiding some of those common problems.  

The short version is shared below; you can view the full document in Notes from the Mayor.

Here's to happier meetings!

Click image to view larger

More than decluttering: Onsite storage cleanup brings many benefits

The junk drawer in the kitchen. The hall closet. The spare room. Under the bed. These are the places that collect clutter in our homes.

Workplaces often have “catch all” locations, too . . . places where you can find old files, ancient office equipment, and musty holiday decorations.

For UVAFinance, this location was the “caged storage” in the Carruthers Hall basement.

Caged storage prior to cleanup completion.

For years, departments in Finance had been using their designated space in the basement to store everything from filing cabinets to microfiche. A new plan to renovate the basement space meant that the caged storage got the attention it had long needed, not only in terms of a clean-up, but also in terms of reevaluating records storage.

The newly-formed Administrative Services Group (ASG) within UVAFinance partnered with UVA Records Management to tackle the mess in the basement. Patrick Wood is a member of ASG and fulfills a lead role in records management and retention.

Wood reports that the monumental cleanup effort took a total of seven weeks, and involved a team of nearly a dozen people from UVAFinance and Records Management, working diligently to sort, inventory, and properly dispatch everything.

Caroline Walters, University Records Officer, leads the Records Management Team. It is this team’s job, among many other duties, to assist and guide faculty and staff on the proper management of all records. She has seen many instances of records landing in these “catch all” spaces.

Walters says that one of the hazards of on-site storage is that records often go unmanaged, which isn’t safe for the records and may put the University at risk when it comes to potential audits, Freedom of Information Act requests, and so on.

The group worked in dim, cramped quarters, painstakingly going through stacks of records, boxes of old files, and envelopes of microfiche, determining with Records Management’s careful guidance which to keep and which to destroy.

“It was dusty, dark, dingy, and claustrophobic,” said Wood. “But Caroline Walters and her team from Records management helped us immensely, and we gradually cleared the space out to the point that it’s now well organized, clean and spacious.”

And what happened to all of that . . . stuff?

“We had four loads of shredding, five loads of furniture and equipment taken to surplus, a ton of trash, loads of recycling, and a heap of things sent to Goodwill and the Rose Project. A few things were sent to the University archives,” said Wood.  

And, notably, over 1200 boxes of records were sent out for off-premises storage.

 

“Records Management helped us make decisions on what to keep and what to throw away, and even more importantly, how to manage what we kept so that it was stored safely and accessibly,” said Wood.

“Not only is much of the basement area now clear and ready for additional construction with cleaner, smaller storage spaces still available, but also, we have our records stored in a way that guarantees safety, compliance, and transparency,” he said.

Wood says the ASG team is writing Standard Operating Procedures for UVAFinance departments on how the storage should be used in the future, so the space doesn’t get cluttered up again.

Special thanks to all involved in this project:  Connie Alexander, Cindy Rodgers, Elizabeth Jackson, Caroline Walters, Jessie Graham, Jessica Burgess, Esther Grace, Stacey Rittenhouse, Patrick Wood, Ashley Rogers, Warren “Hubba” Wood, Mary Fields, Lori O’Connor, Ann Criser, Samantha Morris, Dorothy Moyer, Bess Landolt, and Peggy Johnson.

Computer behaving badly? Check out these troubleshooting tips!

Technology.  We tend to take it for granted until it doesn't work the way we need it to, and then, well, we get frustrated pretty quickly.

When time is of the essence and the computer is malfunctioning, we tend to call the LSP first and ask questions later.  While some of your computer's technical difficulties require professional intervention, many others can be easily solved, even if you're not a "technical person" yourself.

Mike Hayton, an LSP in UVAFinance, put together a handy reference guide to reduce frustration and provide quick solutions for those he and his fellow LSPs serve (click on it to view more closely).   The LSP team hoped these suggestions might help their colleagues avoid waiting for external help and get back up and running quickly.

Click the graphic for a larger view

And yes, "restart your machine" is a suggestion at the top of the list.

"You'd be amazed how many problems a reboot solves," Hayton said, adding that this guide is meant to be a quick first line of defense, not a complete 'fix it yourself' guide.

Hayton also offered this "pro tip" to act on now, while your computer is functioning well:  to prevent data loss, save your files in your personal folder on the U drive, not in "My Documents."  When you save to this folder, your files will be safe and sound no matter what happens with your actual machine.  Your LSP can help you set up this folder if needed.

UVAFinance folks:  printed copies on heavy duty, coated cardstock are being distributed so you can keep the info handy!