Inflation is a fact of life – and of business. We all expect costs to rise by a couple of percentage points every year, but that doesn’t stop managers from asking departments to find cashable savings each year. While it might seem easier to try to cut staff costs, the morale of your office will certainly be higher if you seek to make procurement savings instead. While your procurement spend might only be a small percentage of your overall running costs, any savings you find will soon add up across multiple departments, offices, and sites. Achieving savings on your consumables procurement is likely to be a breeze if you haven’t switched suppliers in decades, but for slightly more up-to-date businesses, savings are trickier to obtain. Staples Advantage has worked with hundreds of companies to help them achieve procurement savings. We fully understand the challenges that businesses face when tackling their procurement spend. Here are a few of those challenges – and how we can help you to overcome them.

It’s inefficient to contact the various suppliers of your different business consumables in an attempt to secure savings. In all likelihood, it probably doesn’t seem worth a lengthy chain of emails just to agree a 10% saving on the cost of your office’s ballpoint pens. If your office administrators or procurement team are spending hours each day trying to locate cheaper suppliers or negotiate contracts, this clearly isn’t an efficient use of their time. By consolidating suppliers, your staff will have fewer contacts to deal with, saving huge amounts of time – and money. Staples Advantage supplies a wide range of office supplies at highly competitive prices. Instead of dealing with dozens of suppliers, you only have to talk to a single, dedicated Account Manager whose role involves securing you additional savings over time.

When you need to stock up on printer paper, pens, or paper towels, how do you normally go about it? Do you call the company up, or send them an email? Once you’ve sent the order off, how do you keep track of it? Staples Advantage works with your company to integrate your assortment with our online ordering platform, Webshop. Not only does this make the order process quick and easy, it also means that electronic invoices are sent through instantly, ensuring that you aren’t left with stacks of paperwork – instead all order details are stored securely in an electronic database. This measures will significantly reduce the administrative burden.

When the time comes to look through the procurement spend with directors, a clear report system that displays the savings accrued and the spend on each item is invaluable. Your Staples Advantage Account Manager will not just provide you with detailed reports on your spend and savings, they’ll also draw up an actionable plan, identifying where additional savings could made, on a site-by-site or even country-by-country basis. This will make it clear to senior members of staff that you’re getting results – and will continue to do so.

To find out more about the cashable savings Staples Advantage could make for your business, contact us today.

June 20th 2014 | Back to Industry Insights