Purchase approvals at Stockton University’s School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics used to arrive by email and kept getting separated from their orders.
Stockton University - A public university in Galloway, New Jersey. Its School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, known as NAMS, runs its purchase requests as approval workflows in Tallyfy.
Marie Jelinski
Professional Services Specialist II
School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Stockton University
Ordering for a whole school by email
Marie manages the school’s purchase requests. “We service over 75 faculty and 25 staff,” she told me.
So we had multiple strings of emails and we were dropping. Things were dropping like approvals came in and we didn’t connect it to the thing that we were ordering, and then it would sit there thinking it still needed that approval until someone said, hey, where’s my thing I ordered? And I’m like, oh, shoot, that never got ordered.
- Marie Jelinski
She kept “a hard copy file of the emails that were coming in with the approvals stapled to it,” which she called “ridiculous in today’s day and age.” Once new hires took on parts of the job, she wasn’t even getting all the emails, so she couldn’t tell when approvals had arrived.
How a request moves now
The approvals come in, it moves to the next person, the person who places the order knows when it’s their turn to place the order. They don’t have to go in and search to see what needs to be placed for the day because it’s going to be in their email.
- Marie Jelinski
Most order placers are guests, and their task list shows what’s due that day or still pending. Nobody has to type “could you please approve this?” anymore.
“It’s not taking me 30 minutes to do something. It’s taking me five minutes,” Marie said. “You can’t really see those dollars and cents all the time. But they do add up.”
Two people used to see the same request and both place it, and since some items are customized and can’t go back, the school was left “stuck paying for two of them.” Now whoever places an order records it in Tallyfy, and “we haven’t accidentally duplicated an order,” she said.
Our faculty here, they do not like change. So when we first started, I was anticipating a pretty big fight with it. I really thought I was gonna have to force them and twist their arm to use it. But most of the faculty have found it to be very easy, and it’s much easier than the system we were using. It’s a lot less to fill out.
- Marie Jelinski
