New Procurement Process in Luma

Background

The prior legacy accounting system, STARS, was not an enterprise design and had many limitations. With the set of products that make up Luma, the state is now enabled to improve processes and gain efficiencies. This includes within the procurement of IT items by state agencies that have had IT efforts consolidated within the Governor’s IT Modernization plan.

The new procurement process of IT equipment is a joint effort between the State Controller’s Office (SCO), the Division of Purchasing, the Office of Information Technology Services (ITS), and ITS supported agencies using Luma.

In both the STARS and Luma environments, ITS obtained quotes on behalf of customers through a separate ticketing system. The next step of ordering the items differs between the two systems. Previously, under STARS, ITS would place the order with the vendor, pay the vendor, and then turn around and bill the purchase amount to the customer agency, and then collect and reconcile the balances.

What Is New

Using Luma, agencies are now able to pay the vendor directly and save the state the extra labor costs from internal billings and collection.

This process enabled by Luma also allows customer agencies to follow their own internal controls for approvals and payments. In the legacy STARS system, many agencies did not use purchase orders as part of their workflow. Instead, they would approve and pay at the invoice stage. Best practices are recommended using Luma where each order starts with a purchase requisition and flows through to invoice payments. Some agencies follow the recommended best practices, and some do not.

For IT purchases that involve ITS for provisioning, installation, and support, it is necessary for agencies to use the best practices process with the ordering agency creating a requisition and using an ITSA code. That enables ITS to receive the items for provisioning, delivery and installation. This also enables the customer agency to manage their invoices and payments directly to the vendor.

ITS continues to provide quotes through a ticketing process. Until December, that was done via support tickets submitted in Ivanti. That system was replaced by ServiceNow, where the quoting process remains similar.

Additional Information

For most agency customers, the volume of IT purchases is very low—sometimes just a couple of purchases during a year.

For customers not using Luma, they continue as they are today. And, of course, there are always exceptions for unique situations. ITS works with customers to ensure successful IT purchases.

Support for the Luma IT procurement process is provided by SCO, whereas ITS coordinates support with vendor processes, such as the Dell customer portal.

Version 1.0 of any software or process has opportunities of improvement. We look forward to continuing work with all parties to make the most of this new system.