INTRODUCTION

Sue Ryder, a leading healthcare and charity organisation has been a valued partner of OT Group for three decades. This collaboration reflects the commitment both businesses share towards streamlining procurement processes, whilst ensuring control and full visibility of business spend. This case study explores their long-standing partnership as OT Group offer strategic sourcing solutions through the consolidation of Sue Ryder’s Point of Sale (POS), General Office Supplies (GOS) and furniture supplies through their industry leading procurement platform, SmartPad.

THE CHALLENGE

With 400 stores across the UK, Sue Ryder’s extensive network required a unified approach to procurement. Their organisation needed a strategic single source supplier capable of consolidating several product and service categories, including POS, GOS, and furniture supplies. Whilst maintaining control over spending and gaining visibility into purchasing activities across the entire organisation was another critical concern for Sue Ryder.

THE PARTNERSHIP

Longstanding relationship – The 15-year partnership between Sue Ryder and OT Group has been built on trust, understanding, and a shared vision for efficient procurement.

Proactive account management – A dedicated account management team from OT Group continue to work closely with Sue Ryder’s retail operations manager to understand the organisations unique needs and challenges. This provides personalised support, ensuring that Sue Ryder’s specific requirements are met helping to identify opportunities for streamlining their procurement process.

Next generation procurement platform, SmartPad – To address the need for control and full visibility, OT Group introduced Sue Ryder to SmartPad, its cutting-edge procurement platform. SmartPad allows Sue Ryder to centralise and manage all procurement activities efficiently. With all the feature-rich functionality you’d expect from a market leading ecommerce site, SmartPad provides access to 100,000’s of products from 10,000’s suppliers giving Sue Ryder everything they need, in one easy-to-use platform.

Consolidation of products and services – OT Group’s capabilities enabled the consolidation of POS, GOS, and furniture supplies, simplifying the procurement process for Sue Ryder giving them the ability to place one order, receive a single delivery, process one invoice and view a single set of reports to keep control of their business costs. This means Sue Ryder’s team spend less time on repetitive, non-critical, everyday tasks, such as sourcing and benchmarking products and prices, and processing orders and invoices.

RESULTS AND BENEFITS

The collaborative efforts between Sue Ryder and OT Group have yielded significant results, these include:

Cost Savings – By consolidating their supply chain, Sue Ryder achieved cost savings through bulk purchasing and reduced administrative costs, providing total cost of ownership.

Control and Visibility – SmartPad has given Sue Ryder full visibility and control of what’s going on across their business, facilitating agile working, boosting productivity, and reducing costs. SmartPad’s intuitive workflows stop rogue spending, eliminate purchase errors, and cut costs through budget management functionality, authorisation routes, and pre-defined, user-specific product lists. It also works as a powerful analytics engine, transforming the raw data from all their transactions into meaningful visualisations. This insight helps Sue Ryder to drive procurement efficiencies, cost savings and maximise revenue.

Efficiency – The streamlined procurement process has freed up valuable time and resources for Sue Ryder’s team, allowing them to focus on their core mission of providing healthcare and support. Using data insight, OT Group leverages business intelligence and helps to proactively identify procurement trends that may otherwise remain untapped. The result is the ability to make more informed supply chain decisions and solve previously unaddressed strategic challenges at every layer of Sue Ryders organisations hierarchy.

CONCLUSION

The enduring partnership between Sue Ryder and OT Group demonstrates the value of long-term collaboration and innovation in the field of procurement. By actively addressing Sue Ryder’s challenges, leveraging the SmartPad platform, and providing exceptional account management, OT Group has helped Sue Ryder achieve its goal of consolidating procurement and gaining control and visibility over its business spend. This partnership is a testament to the benefits of a strong supplier-client relationship built on trust, communication, and a shared commitment to success.