That old saying, ‘what you can measure, you can manage’, rings true especially in the procurement of non-core items like office equipment and stationery, where costs can sneak by you.

It’s important you partner with a company that has accurate reporting systems, because what we are talking about here is outsourcing your business to a certain degree. You are relying on these companies and the information they’re giving you, to track your business and your costs. This reporting gives you what you need to forecast, to budget, and to work on ways of saving more and allows you the freedom to focus on doing what you do best, your core business. The right supplier can help you control costs via accurate reporting and establishing compliance tactics within your organisation.

Let's talk about those compliance tactics. Say for example that you have 100 cost centres in your business throughout Australia. Partner with a supplier that can generate a report that identifies the percentage of centres that have not spent in any given period. You might have 10 people in different locations that haven’t bought anything say, for six months. This exception reporting lets you know that these centres are buying outside of the arrangement, which will be for far more costly than what you’ve negotiated centrally. Once you know that, you can manage team members appropriately and get it back on track.

Fiona Mullen, Procurement & Vendor Manager Suncorp comments:

“Suncorp have in conjunction with Corporate Express come up with a range of specific reports that enable us to maximise savings via identifying and implementing the use of alternate products. In addition Suncorp can better manage our contract compliance via reporting on spend and order frequency by business unit. This benefits compliance by highlighting business units that are not utilising the preferred supplier and therefore adding additional process costs in both order placement and reconciliation. Before this business partnership began Suncorp had difficulty in measuring spend and contract compliance because of the multiple venders that we were dealing with. Often suppliers don’t have the ability to report on spend by item or at cost centre level, without this ability we had no way of taking control of the budgeting process.”

Corporate Express can also track order size and frequency, set benchmarks for purchase levels and more. With the right reporting you can see the effect of establishing simple systems that reduce your process costs as we talked about earlier. If you want people to order via the Internet, we can track the percentage of your purchases coming through Internet ordering. The right supplier can track all of that and help you drive compliance within your team, compliance that saves you money.