Using e-procurement to lower costs, reduce waste, increase organization, and save time

Summary of Highlights

Centralized all supply purchasing for 4 locations, without changing suppliers

Reduced supplies costs by 15%, saving an average of $3,405 per month

Saved time by standardizing the buying process across all locations and eliminating the need to call multiple suppliers to compare prices

“Definitely having all the suppliers right there and being able to easily see who has the lower cost makes it so much easier, it increases visibility and transparency on pricing.”

Anita Swanger

Situational Overview

The Bain Dental Group, headed by Dr. Brian Bain, DDS, has three locations, and an educational facility, all located right outside Atlanta, GA. Monitoring and maintaining the appropriate level of production and office supplies for all four locations is a full-time job for Anita Swanger, the purchasing coordinator whom Dr. Bain has entrusted with this responsibility. Her responsibilities include establishing and adhering to supply budgets, tracking inventory levels, monitoring shipping status of orders and maintaining relationships with all suppliers and their reps, across all four offices.

“At that time, we weren’t ordering anything on line. We just had a sales rep come by and take the order and it was kind of hard to track.”

Challenges

Running a single-location practice has its own unique set of challenges.

When Anita took over this responsibility in late 2021, all the orders were being placed by phone or directly with suppliers’ reps, and all tasks and processes used to manage and record the inventory levels, ordering, shipping and receiving were paper based. Consequently:

Comparing prices across suppliers was demanding and time-consuming.
Tracking inventory levels across multiple locations in real time was impossible.
Verifying order status and deliveries was complicated and inaccurate.

Solution

Based on the recommendation of another Bain employee who had worked with Method at a previous practice, Dr. Bain instructed his team to subscribe to Method’s Enterprise package.

Based on the recommendation of another Bain employee who had worked with Method at a previous practice, Dr. Bain instructed his team to subscribe to Method’s Enterprise package. The shift from an entirely manual, paper-based process to a software solution was initially met with some skepticism and anxiety, as the staff was concerned that the new technology would be difficult to use.

However, with the help of Method’s Client Success Team, combined with Method’s simple interface, Anita was able to quickly learn the system. Once the Method team had set up the integrations with all of Bain’s preferred suppliers, the Bain team had instant access to real-time pricing information, and status on all supply orders.

Outcome/Results

The impact of switching to Method was immediate.

As a result of placing all of their orders through Method, BDG realized a return on their investment of 5x, in just the first month, saving over $3,400 on supply costs in November of 2021. Anita also reports that having everything centralized in a single, simple view has made the process of ordering supplies so much easier and quicker.  

Anita was also pleased to tell us that she uses Method to set separate budgets for each office and keep each office on budget by setting it to warn her if she’s at risk of going over. It’s also been a huge timesaver when it comes to tracking orders and checking on the status of deliveries.

Eliminate manual counting, automate reordering, and get real-time visibility into inventory levels across all locations

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