Founded in Corona, California, Technical America’s IES (Industrial Equipment Solutions) has been designing and producing refrigeration and gas compression packages since 1990. After delivering solutions to major air separation, oil and gas, chemical, and petrochemical industries for almost 30 years, Technical America began its search for a better way to manage the procurement process that facilitated its services worldwide.
After implementing Tradogram as their system of choice, Technical America’s purchasing manager, Anna Verduo, shares the evaluation and implementation method used to create a digital transformation in their organization’s purchasing, sourcing, and approval processes.
CHALLENGES FACED IN A TRADITIONAL ENGINEERING PROCUREMENT PROCESS:
Anna explains that traditional procurement was causing bottlenecks in a number of their ordering and accounting processes:
“We didn’t have an ERP (enterprise resource planning) or a procurement system of any description within our process” she explains, “Purchases were being placed manually, which made it difficult to track the status of each order. When it came time to receive those orders and update accounting details, it was very time consuming to trace all of the details.”
Improving documentation, enhancing communication, and increasing process time efficiency were all factors that Anna wanted to improve throughout the organisation, and set to work in evaluating different proponent solutions that could adhere to those requirements.
Anna Verdugo
Purchasing Manager at Technical America
OBJECTIVES OF A NEW PROCUREMENT SYSTEM:
With multiple departments including QA, Services, Administration, and Accounts Payable, Technical America needed a solution that could communicate the complicated order specifications of engineering equipment between many stakeholders within the organization.
To meet these requirements, the following solutions provided by Tradogram were tested, evaluated, and determined to be the best proponent tools prior to the full implementation of the system. A free account allowed the functionality of these tools to be tested thoroughly during the evaluation process:
The following challenges were identified as objectives for improving Technical America’s operations, and traceable KPIs were established to determine whether Tradogram was successful as a solution:
- Eliminate the need to track physical paper trails.
- Remove bottlenecks encountered during approval workflows.
- Improve communication between internal and external stakeholders.
- Improve the management of purchasing contracts and negotiation processes.
- Track all company spending to better adhere to budget limitations.
RESULTING BENEFITS FROM IMPLEMENTING TRADOGRAM’S PROCUREMENT SYSTEM:
After implementing Tradogram, Anna reported the following “before and after” findings from a mix of statistics provided by the system, as well as observable changes to employee workflows:
Purchase Order
Processing Method
Physical paper forms filled out and mailed to suppliers after circulating the office for required approvals
Electronic forms created and submitted for approval through Tradogram
Purchase orders forwarded to suppliers via e-mail.
Purchase Order
Processing Time(Including Creation, Approval, and Forwarding to Supplier)
2-8 Hours
Less than 2 Hours
Accounts Payable and Financial Auditing
Paper documents stapled and filed for future review.
Reports manually assembled auditing.
Budget planning disconnected from actual company spending practices.
Data from digital documents automatically synchronised with AP software (QuickBooks) through integration options.
Categorised spend reports and budget tracking available for project management.
CLOSING REMARKS FROM ANNA:
On average, Technical America processes 350 purchase orders per month. After reviewing spend reports from their purchasing analytics after more than a year of use, Anna’s company reported purchasing cost savings of about 25%, as well as a drastic decrease in the time needed to close a purchase to pay cycle.
Anna also had this to share about her experience with Tradogram:
“Working with Tradogram is a breeze. It’s very user friendly, easy to review a lot of information quickly. Every document is also linked automatically, from requisitions, purchase orders, invoices, and even delivery details. This is very convenient.
All the users are allowed certain permissions on projects – this ensures that they don’t get confused by information that isn’t relative to their specific projects.
This is a great system. It even integrates with our accounting system (QuickBooks), making it very easy to see what’s been processed and synced to AP.
I’d recommend Tradogram to any small/medium business!”
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