Procurement Trends

With Nick Davis, SiteStuff

By Leah Etling on Mar 26, 2012 in News

Real estate procurement may not be the most glamorous aspect of the business, but it’s an essential ingredient of well-run properties and managing it well is essential to seamless budget planning for any property management firm.

Yardi Systems subsidiary SiteStuff, based in Austin, Texas and  headed up by Vice President and General Manager Nick Davis, is the one-stop shop for over 6,000  properties that are purchasing all of their maintenance, repair and operations supplies – and are benefitting from the convenience of receiving just one invoice, rather than negotiating and financially settling with multiple vendors.

We talked to Nick about forthcoming developments in the procurement arena.

 What’s the latest procurement trend?

What we are finding more and more nowadays is the executives and managers desire to get ahead of the spend, to have visibility into the spend, to see what they’re buying, how frequently they’re buying it, and why they’re buying it.

Whereas in the old days a product manager might have walked down to the local hardware store and bought a case of light bulbs, nowadays a purchase order will be raised, that purchase order will be checked against a budget and then approved, and the products will be purchased against the contracted price.

The trend is to analyze the spend, compare it to budgets, and cut out what we call “maverick spend,” which is spending outside of agreed contracts, and to generally provide a more efficient process that includes budget checking and approvals, purchasing at contracted prices and invoice presentment and payment all in one seamless efficient platform.

Can you give us an update on Procure-to-Pay?
Our clients have come to us and said: We would like the Procurement process and the  Payment process to be one combined process on a single platform and with a single database that’s streamlined and automated, and provides the ability to manage the spend and the approval process. We’re bringing the SiteStuff procurement solution to the Yardi Payment Solutions together to provide this end to end procure to pay application.

What is the technology that makes this work, and is it mobile?

It’s a single platform, a single database, and the budget variance analysis is performed in real time against the current general ledger. It is built into Yardi Voyager, which is the book of record for the property manager, therefore there are no data interfaces needed . The approval process is built into Yardi Voyager also, and purchase orders and invoices can be viewed and approved on mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPad and Android.

Is there anything in the works for Service Providers?

Property managers spend outwards of $5 per square foot on service providers – like landscaping, and cleaning crews.  These contracts with these service providers can be managed and put out for bid in a very efficient way and vendors can be invited to bid through a portal.  Bids can be compared and awarded through this platform. It’s a place where clients and vendors meet, where they can exchange insurance information, provide invoice information and status to each other and they can participate in a bidding process for services. That’s something exciting that’s underway right now.

When will that service provider platform be available for customer use?

Second quarter of 2012.

Anything else you’d like to share with us?

We at SiteStuff have extensive knowledge of the variety of sustainable products in our catalog, which are highlighted for ease of use. We also feature suggested shopping lists that contain only sustainable products so, say  you wanted to ‘green’ your building, we can suggest purchases. Customers are very intrigued by this offering and are motivated to implement sustainable purchasing habits.