The Challenge:
PushPay, a Church Management company, faced inefficiencies in its procurement process. Managing software requests, renewals, contract changes, and general inquiries involved disparate tools and manual workflows. This resulted in a lack of visibility, slow processing times, and difficulty identifying cost-saving opportunities.
Sean Warren, Director of Procurement at PushPay, summarized their 3 key challenges as:
- Tool Governance: PushPay lacked a central system to manage and track software tools, leading to potential redundancies and wasted spend.
- Spend Management: Inefficient processes made it difficult to monitor spending and identify areas for cost optimization.
- Strategic Support: Manual workflows consumed valuable time, hindering the procurement team’s ability to provide strategic support to the business.
The Solution:
PushPay evaluated various solutions seeking a platform that combined user-friendly technology with strong negotiation support.
Ultimately, they chose Opstream for its comprehensive approach:
- People, Process, and Technology: Opstream addressed all aspects of procurement, creating a streamlined workflow for all stakeholders – vendors, requesters, and approvers.
- Centralized Source of Truth: Opstream eliminated siloed communication by providing a single platform for managing the entire procurement process.
- Data-Driven Insights: Opstream’s built-in intelligence automatically identified similar tools within the existing stack, highlighting potential redundancies and cost-saving opportunities.
“What I love about Opstream, was it created an orchestration workflow for all of those different journeys to take place and brings everybody involved in the process – the vendors, the requesters, the approvers, to the same source of truth. So we’re all on the same page with what’s going on.”
The Results:
Opstream’s implementation at PushPay delivered significant improvements across multiple areas:
- 79% decrease in request approval time: New software requests went from an average of 73 days to a mere 18 days
- Enhanced Team Efficiency: Approval teams saved a staggering 50% of their time.
- Improved Visibility and Governance: Opstream’s self-service portal encouraged a wider range of requests to enter the system, fostering transparency and better governance over procurement activities.
Beyond the Numbers
The impact of Opstream extended beyond just the quantifiable metrics. Sean highlights the creation of a more efficient and collaborative procurement environment:
- Streamlined Communication: Opstream eliminated lengthy email threads and scattered conversations, centralizing all communication within the platform.
- Empowered Users: Self-service capabilities gave requesters real-time visibility into request status and approvers a central location to manage tasks.
- Data-Driven Decisions: Opstream’s insights into Duplicate tools empowered PushPay to negotiate better contracts and identify opportunities to consolidate redundant services.
- Improved Vendor Experience: Opstream facilitated a more streamlined interaction with vendors, including in-context questionnaires and DocuSign integration for effortless contract redlining.
By leveraging Opstream’s full potential, PushPay is poised to achieve even greater procurement efficiency, transparency, and cost savings.
