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CSAT Solutions
Amazon Business helps them reduce costs, and save time on sourcing and vendor selection.
Published on
11 December, 2020
Overview
Like most businesses, CSAT Solutions wants to constrain costs. It’s doing that with a big assist from Amazon Business. The company has cut purchasing spend by 40 percent annually and consolidated vendors of IT peripherals, office supplies, MRO, and production support by 50 percent. Great credit terms add flexibility, and analysis tools provide superb visibility into total spend.
A new facility adds incentive to keep costs down
Business is booming at CSAT Solutions, whose “complete care for the digital world” includes repair and logistics services for a large and growing range of electronic devices. The company’s challenge: to keep revenues growing without similarly increasing costs,
To keep costs down, the company looked closely at what it purchased and how. Its highly decentralized process included about 100 vendors, with CSAT Solutions buying from most of them just once a year. Yet, maintaining those vendor accounts cost the company time and money. Plus, purchasers didn’t have any way to know if they were getting the best deals. With a new facility slated to open soon, the company had every incentive to solve the problem fast.
Saves 40%, boosts flexibility, supports diversity
To address these concerns, CSAT Solutions adopted Business Prime on Amazon Business. In its first year with the program, CSAT Solutions is on track to save $225,000 in products and shipping, about 40 percent of total spend on maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) supplies, IT peripherals, office supplies, and production support. It’s also consolidated its roster of vendors by 50 percent, reducing administrative costs.
“Amazon Business does a fantastic job of showing us where our big savings are and how to maximize them.”
— Chris Tiesman, Chief Financial Officer, CSAT Solutions
The financial benefits that CSAT Solutions derives from its relationship with Amazon Business go further. The 55-day net terms that it enjoys are better than other vendors that require payment in 30 days, or even up front. “Amazon Business’s credit terms help our internal cash flow tremendously,” Tiesman says. “We have wild spikes in business volume, and this gives us the flexibility we need. It makes capital equipment expansion much easier.”
And it does more. By reducing purchasing time and cost, CSAT Solutions frees up 1.5 FTEs in the purchasing department. “We’re expanding, opening a third facility, and we’ve been able to handle the additional requisitions without additional staff, thanks to Business Prime,” says Eric Serfoss, Director of Supply Chain at CSAT Solutions.
A growing number of the company’s customers want assurances that it is socially conscious in its operations—including its supply chain. Serfoss uses Amazon Business Analytics to confirm its use of small businesses and businesses owned by women, veterans, and disabled people. “Our big customers grade us on this measure quarterly,” says Serfoss. “We’ve gotten additional points for diversity spend.” Serfoss and his colleagues use the same analysis tools to analyze purchasing by commodity, requisitioner, and other factors, giving them greater insight into—and control over—that purchasing.
CSAT Solutions ramped up with Business Prime very quickly. “We adjusted some workflow in accounting, but not much, and purchasing was comfortable with Business Prime right away,” says Tiesman. “That’s part of the benefit of Amazon Business: everyone is used to having it at home, and this isn’t much different. If you’ve already purchased something online from Amazon, you know how to do this.”
Tiesman and Serfoss expect CSAT Solutions to increase the volume of business it does with Amazon Business. “We see big opportunities to shift more purchasing through Amazon Business,” says Tiesman. “We get more savings, more flexibility, more control. And the amount of personal attention and follow-up in customer service has been excellent. Amazon Business is the way to go.”
Please note: This story originates from the US and as such, specific references to savings, features or benefits may apply only to this country. For more information on the benefits of Amazon Business in the UK, Learn more.
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