How RJ Young Saves Time and Money on Purchasing with PO Processor
See how RJ Young put purchasing automation to work, from connecting vendors to simplifying daily orders, and what its experience reveals about the setup effort and time savings.
Making purchasing simpler at RJ Young
With 19 offices in six states, RJ Young has served the office equipment industry for more than 60 years. As the third largest independently owned dealer in the United States, it offers technology that helps businesses grow. It expects its own business management software to support that same goal.
RJ Young moved from ECI OMD to e-automate in 2013. “It was quite an undertaking because e-automate is so different from OMD,” said Scott Niccolich, Parts Warehouse Manager at RJ Young. “We were, however, instantly aware that the potential for e-automate was far greater than that of OMD.”
Purchasing was one area where Scott saw room for improvement. Working through vendor websites or placing orders by phone and email meant spending time checking prices and tracking confirmations. With hundreds of purchase orders to process each week, that work took time away from other priorities.
PO Processor offered a way to handle orders with participating vendors directly through e-automate. Getting those connections in place took effort, but it gave Scott a simpler way to manage daily purchasing.
Bringing vendor orders into one workflow
Not long after the move to e-automate, Scott learned about PO Processor, or POP. The tool connects dealers with participating vendors from within e-automate. RJ Young can review pricing and availability, send an order, and receive the vendor’s confirmation without leaving the system.
“Just the concept alone made me want it,” said Scott.
RJ Young worked closely with its suppliers to activate POP connections, then built its process around the available integrations. Once those connections were in place, the team could use e-automate for more of its purchasing activity.
Today, RJ Young has integrations with Ricoh and Canon for parts, as well as Supplies Network, Q2 and Clover. The company processes an estimated 500 equipment, parts, and supplies purchase orders each week. It uses PO Processor for about 60% of those orders.
Cutting order times from minutes to seconds
For Scott, PO Processor removed much of the back-and-forth involved in placing an order. Instead of checking a vendor site or following up by phone or email, he can submit the order in e-automate and receive the confirmation there.
Getting POP up and running takes some work. But Scott says it saves time on both ordering and purchase order maintenance. Saving hours each week on purchase orders lets dealers focus on serving customers and growing revenue.
“So you’re placing an order online and it takes you three minutes start to finish,” said Niccolich. “What if I told you that you can do the same order in 15 seconds. Who wouldn’t want that?”
For RJ Young, the effort to connect vendors through PO Processor has paid off in simpler purchasing and less time spent managing orders. By bringing more of that work into e-automate, the team can spend less time on routine tasks and more time supporting customers and business growth.
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