Easy ordering and consolidation of requisitions across a geographically disperse set of business units

Company context

SprintEx is a small-sized courier company engaged primarily in intra-city small parcel ground delivery. The company maintains a network of about 50 physical locations where parcels can be dropped off or collected. Physical locations are run and managed by full-time employees, who manage the processing and sorting of items for delivery. Actual delivery is subcontracted to independent delivery van operators and bike riders who are supported by a tech stack that optimizes delivery routes, and provides instructions on pick up and delivery locations.

The problem

SprintEx maintains a lean team at each of its physical locations, with limited resources available for administrative tasks, which are centralized. Procurement needs of each of the physical branches are managed centrally at the head office.

Requests for items used to be submitted via lists of items required in Excel format or simply through emails. Each requisition was processed as it came in, with the item ordered directly by the head office, but delivery arranged so that the item was sent directly to the branch location.

As the physical locations grew, managing the manual emails and excel sheets became more challenging and time consuming.

The process was also deemed to be inefficient from the cost perspective: Although there was frequent overlap of items being requested from different locations on a weekly basis, there was no easy way to scan the requests and consolidate similar items. Moreover, it was becoming expensive to pay for separate deliveries to each location, when the items could be sent to the head office and then distributed to the relevant locations through the company's own contracted fleet.

The solution

SprintEx required a solution that would facilitate its administration and procurement team in consolidating the requisitions and better optimize the procurement volumes and delivery schedules.

The breadth and variety of items being requisitioned along with their relative urgency and delivery schedules meant that an online spreadsheet solution would not suffice. However, due to cost considerations and the need to keep user training requirements to a minimum, SprintEx could not afford a lengthy implementation of a complex solution.

Proqura's web-based requisitioning system proved to be an elegant and cost-effective way for SprintEx to manage this process.

• Proqura's Catalogue Management functionality was used to create a comprehensive list of frequently and commonly requested items, organized by category, and number with unique item codes.
• End users at each of the branches were given access to Proqura's Purchase Request interface, a simple and intuitive portal which required no training and no localized software installation. Through this, users could select and submit requisitions for whichever items they needed purchased. Users could mention their required delivery date and level of urgency to enable the administration team to consolidate and bulk non-urgent items together.
• Administrators would receive notifications of purchase requests, and could easily group similar items into a single order.
• The status of the purchases and the orders could be easily viewed and tracked, both at the branch and the head office level, providing visibility to everyone.

Impact acheived

As a result of implementing Proqura, the time needed to process requisitions was reduced to a fraction of its earlier level, savings hundreds of manhours a year. Delivery charges paid to third-parties were cut down to less than 40% of their earlier levels.