Addressing Accounts Payable (AP) was a priority identified as part of the 2010 benchmark. The AP Shared Service Center is the culmination of the work to embrace the principles of shared services and improve the processes of release and review of payments (PO, Non-PO, and Travel & Expenses) as well as vendor maintenance for all four campuses and the UM System. The changes this team made benefit the University by fully standardizing back office AP processes for all campuses, providing one point of contact to our vendors for payment, allowing campus resources to be redeployed to focus on enhancing front-end processes that occur in departmental administration for accounts payable, and reduced cost and time when implementing business process or technological changes in the future. Priorities of the AP Shared Service Center include a commitment to ensuring excellent customer service, maintaining internal controls, using effective communication strategies, and promoting the change on each campus in order to ensure success.
The AP Shared Service Center is governed by a Service Level Agreement overseen by the Campus Accounting Offices, Controller’s Office and Procurement. You can visit the AP Shared Service Center online at https://umsystem.edu/apss. In addition to the effectiveness gained it is estimated that this project will result in $100,000’s in cost savings spent on the AP process.
Reviewed 2019-08-05