BearBuy production downtime will take place between Friday, March 17, at 6 p.m. through Sunday, March 19, at 9 a.m. to upgrade from release version 22.3 to 23.1. To avoid delays, please complete all BearBuy requests prior to the system maintenance. BearBuy will be available on Monday, March 20.
The ODP Business Solutions and the Genesee Scientific punchout catalogs are now separately available in BearBuy. The new punchouts have replaced the ODP Business Solutions Supplies and Genesee Scientific hosted catalogs, respectively. The new punchouts offer the University’s contracted discounts.
Last month’s Earth Month Lunch Flyover series was a success with 17 sessions from various travel suppliers and University of California (UC) partners with 814 participants from across the UC! Those who attended the Marriott session had the opportunity to present suggestions toward sustainability. We received the official certificate that 25 trees were planted by the Arbor Day Foundation on behalf of the UC. The UC Travel Office continues efforts to provide meaningful, travel-related guidance for UC travelers, including regular webinars that will begin May 15 where results from the annual travel survey (with year-over-year comparisons) will be shared. More sessions, including upcoming town hall opportunities, will be announced as they are confirmed. As the summer months get underway, navigating varying aspects of travel can be challenging and the following tips can help ease some of the frustrations: Plan and book ahead as much as possible: Airfare prices continue to increase, and availability of decently priced hotel rooms grows scarce. Travelers are at risk of being priced out of reasonable rates if they wait too long to confirm trips. Book the first flight of the day out to your destination: Delays compound throughout the day - if possible, book the nonstop flights (which potentially reduce CO2 emissions as well). Stick with the same airline all the way to your destination: Airlines can only commit to their own schedules; and, if one cancels, it is not the responsibility of the other to adjust your connecting flight. Carefully note airline schedule changes: Do not act on them immediately, unless your flight is within a couple of days of the change (our webinar recording found in the travel portal on schedule changes dives into why you should allow yourself time to research your options from full cancellations to destination changes to airline switches). Understand your rights and options in the event of major cancelations or excessive delays. We have also found that travelers who sign up for the miles and loyalty programs tend to have additional advantages. While UC’s contracts offer various benefits such as priority boarding, access to free preferred seats and potential for premium class upgrades at the airport (based on availability), loyalty programs could elevate some of these benefits even more and possibly provide free checked bags, all of which may present travelers a significant cost savings benefit. These loyalty programs could sometimes be the difference between members and regular travelers, especially with car rentals where drivers may be able to skip excessively long lines at the airport counter and directly drive off the lot. If you have higher status at a particular airline, you may be able to take advantage of UC specific status match programs with Alaska, Delta, and United. You can also link your personal United, Uber, Hertz, and Enterprise accounts to UC and gain significant benefits. All links can be found in the travel portal: United “Break for Business” gives up to 10% discount when booking directly at united.com. Hertz and Enterprise allow access to all UC contracted rates when reserving a vehicle on their websites. Uber Business provides Priority Pick-up where our travelers are prioritized over others, especially at peak/high demand times or areas (such as conventions or airports) Finally, we encourage you to explore the travel portal for other benefits such as weekend/holiday rates with CQ (Club Quarters) with deep discounts averaging 65% (and could go up to 150%). Our new Sustainability page is also a great resource to help you understand green travel and your global footprint.
It was -80 degrees cool to be on hand at UCSF's 12th Annual Chancellor’s Sustainability Awards and hear Senior Vice Chancellor Erin S. Gore talk about a whole-campus effort to retire our least energy-efficient freezers in favor of Energy Star models. The ability to reliably and efficiently cold-store biospecimens is an essential part of research supply chain at UCSF. Thanks to Supply Chain Management (SCM) staff members Dean Shehu (co-lead of the program), Charles Sabia, Greg Phillips, and our warehouse staff, who are there to greet every new freezer at our loading dock and help it to its new home in San Francisco. Congratulations also to our campus collaborators like Trish Hackemack, Mary Anne Hallacy, Gail Lee, and others who make this initiative cooler than cold!Dean shared his gratitude: “We are grateful for the enormous institutional support we’ve received from our SCM colleagues, faculty, senior leadership, and $3 million in funding to replace 300 of the most inefficient ULT freezers. We are proud to be part of a project that will create a lasting improvement in UCSF’s carbon footprint and financial resiliency. Sustainable cold storage management provides an attractive return on investment while proactively protecting valuable research materials.”
We are pleased to highlight the success of the U.S. Bank Student Funding project, a significant milestone in our ongoing efforts to enhance payment processes and foster collaboration with our suppliers. The initiative involved hiring three student interns who made substantial contributions to our Payment Plus campaign from December 2023 to May 2024.The Payment Plus program has revolutionized our payment system, enabling the secure delivery of automated virtual Visa card payments to our suppliers. Our objectives with this program were to expedite supplier payments, improve process efficiency, enhance working capital management, mitigate fraud, and reduce transaction processing costs.During their internship, the student interns provided invaluable support to two Payment Plus campaigns. Their responsibilities included conducting extensive research on over 10,000 suppliers, utilizing platforms such as BearBuy, ImageNow, invoice copies, and Google to gather comprehensive vendor contact information. Additionally, they played a vital role in initiating campaign emails to more than 3,700 suppliers, forwarding all communication to U.S. Bank.The interns’ accomplishments were exceptional and contributed significantly to the project’s success. They worked closely with the Disbursement Team, facilitating knowledge exchange and training opportunities. Through their dedicated efforts, they acquired extensive knowledge of Accounts Payable and Payment Plus processes, providing valuable insights and feedback to improve the program and future internships.For a detailed summary of their internship experience, we encourage you to review this presentation, which comprehensively outlines their achievements and contributions.The U.S. Bank Student Funding project exemplifies our commitment to innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement. We extend our sincere appreciation to the student interns for their exceptional dedication and commend their remarkable success in advancing our Payment Plus campaign.Please stay tuned for future updates on our ongoing initiatives and success stories.
Under University of California (UC) G-28 Travel Regulations policy, reimbursing employee commuting expenses to a campus location is not allowed. For this reason, UCSF employees whose job duties are classified as “fully onsite” or as “flexible” are not eligible for reimbursement of costs to travel to UCSF locations.However, for UCSF employees whose job duties are classified as “fully offsite,” the work location is not a University location. The fully offsite arrangement is for the convenience of UCSF and thus the employee’s home is considered as the work location. The employee may be reimbursed for travel expenses to a UCSF location if they meet the following requirements:Travel may not be more frequent than four trips per fiscal year.The employee’s home location must be outside of the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties: San Francisco, Marin , Alameda, Santa Clara, Sonoma, Solano, San Mateo, Napa and Contra Costa.Due to the changing policy and operational environment, this guidance will be re-evaluated in 12 months.As with all reimbursements, the employee and their department are responsible for complying with relevant UC policies and procedures. If you have questions, please contact your supervisor or the SCM Response Team.
On July 1, 2024, the UC Office of the President updated the system-wide purchasing Terms and Conditions. In conjunction with UC Business and Finance Bulletin BUS-43, UC Terms and Conditions must be used when buying goods and/or services. No changes, deletions, exceptions or additions may be made to these documents, outside of certain allowable exceptions dictated by UC Office of the President, without exceptional approval from the Chief Procurement Officer. If a supplier requests that their terms and conditions be used or requests changes to UC Terms and Conditions, tell the supplier that UC Terms and Conditions are mandated. If the supplier continues to push back, alert your Supply Chain Management (SCM) Department-Assigned Buyer.
Find related news about the UCSF Greenphire ClinCard.
Starting in the afternoon on July 25, the new Supply Chain Management (SCM) website will completely replace the current site. The transition may take a few hours to complete, and you might experience some slowness or minor issues during this period. If you notice any missing images or slow page load times after 5 p.m. on Thursday, please notify the SCM Communications Team. The website address remains www.supplychain.ucsf.edu with all relevant content from the old site repositioned on the new site. Customers will still be able to find content, access linked forms and documents, click through to outside references, and create service tickets as they did before. We will continue to monitor traffic and collaborate with subject matter experts to update and enhance the site as it stabilizes. If you have bookmarked pages from the old site for quick reference or to share, please note that these links may not work or may have updated content on the new site. We recommend double-checking your bookmarks and exploring the new site for new bookmark-worthy content. Thank you for your understanding and patience during this transition. We look forward to providing you with an improved online experience with our new SCM website. "SCM Communications started work on cleaning and updating content last fall with the migration happening just this past March. Since then, we have been working on both sites to keep information available for our customers, so we are pleased to see this project come to fruition. We’re indebted to the assistance provided by IT Web Services and our SCM content experts. I’m very proud of all the work completed thus far and believe the new design and layout will make navigating our site a much better experience for the UCSF campus and Health." — Lucky Corral, SCM Interim Communications Lead
Amazon Business Dedicated Delivery managed by SCM Logistics is now available.
