Executive Summary
At the University of Oxford, every department has its own way of doing things, and keeping procurement consistent across them was getting harder. Spreadsheets, local databases and varied processes meant the central procurement team spent more time tracking down information, maintaining records and building reports than managing sourcing and suppliers.
The university partnered with GEP to modernize source-to-contract and bring more structure to category management. GEP’s AI-native software went live with the central procurement team in five months, pulling sourcing, contracting and supplier management into one place and standardizing templates, supplier classifications and due diligence processes.
The impact was quick. Within six months, 300+ suppliers and contracts covering over £130 million in annual spend were live on the platform. Centralized records and automated workflows cut administrative effort, tightened governance and made compliance checks more consistent, for procurement teams and suppliers alike.
GEP’s Intelligent Category Management now gives the procurement team spend and supplier data, benchmarking, AI-generated recommendations and market intelligence across 200+ categories and 100,000+ market indices, helping them monitor markets proactively and build sourcing strategies with more confidence.
With a common foundation in place, Oxford is now piloting the solution with a number of departments, with a wider rollout to follow.
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FAQs
Fragmented systems, spreadsheets and manual processes made it hard to maintain reliable supplier and contract data, monitor compliance and build sourcing strategies. Oxford partnered with GEP to change that.
GEP deployed AI-native source-to-contract software to connect sourcing, contracting and supplier management. The implementation standardized workflows, supplier classifications, and sourcing templates, and created a centralized repository for supplier and contract data.
The platform went live in five months, standardizing source-to-contract processes for the central procurement team, which influences more than 50% of the university’s addressable spend. Within six months, 300+ suppliers and contracts covering over £130 million in annual spend were live on the platform.
The solution brings together spend data, supplier intelligence, benchmarking and AI-generated recommendations, with access to more than 100,000 market indices across 200+ categories. This helps category managers monitor markets proactively and speed up category strategy development and execution.