VERVE

VERVE is a no-cost online marketplace for education where many of E&I’s contracts are pre-loaded and available in a secure, controlled purchasing environment. VERVE is available to all E&I members as part of their E&I membership.

No, there is no cost for using the solution.

VERVE is available to all E&I members, including higher education and K-12. VERVE can be used by procurement staff, faculty, department heads, end users, and other campus stakeholders.

P-card orders are accepted by default in VERVE. Institutions can also enable the ability to use purchase orders and RFQs at no additional cost.

VERVE is a turnkey eProcurement service managed entirely by E&I. Think of it as an open marketplace in which all members get the same great experience. Members looking to be more strategic simply need to designate an administrator, who will manage some aspects on the back end. It’s a really light lift but it allows for customization and many key benefits, including:

• Access to member-specific E&I contracts
• Use of p-cards and purchase orders (POs)
• Institution has administrative rights
• Approval workflows
• Shopper-only role, transfer shopping cart to authorized buyers
• Punchout from existing ERP or eProcurement systems at low or no cost
• Basic branding
• Reporting

Yes. VERVE is most powerful when you designate an admin to manage some back-end aspects of the system, but we understand this is not always possible. This ready-to-use version of VERVE allows your users to register for and shop with p-cards as they would any e-commerce site. E&I manages all administrative aspects for you on the back end.

VERVE is preloaded with E&I contracts. This means all users are accessing E&I standard national pricing. Institutions can also enable member-specific pricing on E&I contracts. We view this as a compelling reason to joining VERVE at the institutional level.

95% of all contracts in VERVE are competitively solicited, and approximately 5% are negotiated. VERVE features filters that enable users to sort contracts by type.

EqualLevel is E&I’s technology partner. EqualLevel’s applications are developed with the goal of protecting customer credit card data in accordance with PCI DSS standards and all customer information is handled in a compliant manner. VERVE is built using an EqualLevel SaaS application and is PCI compliant.

Customer’s credit card data is never stored in VERVE.  All credit card data inbound to EqualLevel applications are intercepted, encrypted and stored in a secure vault, hosted on Amazon AWS.  Only the tokens generated in the process are accessible to the EqualLevel applications.  On outbound transactions to the customer vendors, the credit card data is retrieved from the vault on the fly and transmitted to the vendor in compliance with the cXML standard.

E&I and EqualLevel do not, under any circumstance, store PCI relevant data, including card validation code (CVV, CVV2, CVC2, CID, CAV2, etc.), PIN, or magnetic stripe data.

Yes. You can punch out from your existing eProcurement platform to VERVE to quickly and easily enable additional contracts in a secure controlled environment.

EqualLevel, Sponsored by E&I is an innovative, born-in-the-cloud P2P platform, licensed and managed directly by any member institution looking for a flexible, customizable eProcurement experience. Because the solution is sponsored by E&I, members can take advantage of all the benefits of a fully functional eProcurement platform while extracting significant additional value and rapid return on investment. EqualLevel, Sponsored by E&I comes preloaded with E&I catalogs.

This is a common problem at many schools and universities. Recognizing this, E&I has developed a Change Management Toolkit to help communicate to end users and help them understand the benefits of VERVE. Most of this is templated and easy to repurpose. We will work with you to help get the word out on campus and grow usage.

eProcurement has typically been out of reach for many of our members. VERVE changes that dynamic. In addition, many members use a range of E&I contracts but may not be fully aware of the complete breadth of our portfolio. Others identify p-card and off-contract spend as a significant pain point for their institution. VERVE is an easy-to-adopt service that brings E&I’s portfolio of suppliers together in a secure, controlled environment with E&I contract pricing, federated search, and the ability to add member-specific pricing on E&I contracts.

All of E&I’s contracted suppliers have some presence in VERVE. Virtually all suppliers and their offerings are available via search. For suppliers with punchout capabilities, members can shop directly on the suppliers’ websites while still inside VERVE. Some suppliers (e.g., service providers) have Request for Quote functionality. A small number of suppliers have an Information Only presence in VERVE.

Each supplier in VERVE will have their own returns and replacement policy. In general, it will fall in line with that supplier’s return and replacement policy under the E&I contract. Click on any supplier tile in VERVE to bring up that supplier’s profile and view specific contact information.