The School Board of Sarasota County Wins ARCHIBUS Application Excellence Award for Innovative e-Procurement System

The School Board of Sarasota County’s Director of Facilities Services Jody Dumas, and ARCHIBUS Facilitator Melanie Gombos, have won the Application Excellence Award from ARCHIBUS, Inc. (www.archibus.com), the #1 developer of software solutions for real estate, infrastructure and facilities management in the world, for their work in implementing an e-Procurement solution that streamlined maintenance parts ordering and reduced related costs for their Florida school district.

The Application Excellence Award is presented to visionary organizations that have demonstrated a unique, innovative application of ARCHIBUS software to solve organizational challenges.

“This is very exciting,” said Ms. Gombos, accepting her award at the event. “We’re very proud of the e-Procurement process; it works very, very well. Our ARCHIBUS Business Partner, ADSI, played a huge part in its success. They really understood our vision for this development.”

Mr. Dumas and Ms. Gombos integrated the work order management function in their ARCHIBUS Building Operations Management application with an e-Procurement solution, a combination that delivers significant time and cost savings. In the past, ordering a repair replacement part was time-intensive – the maintenance worker would download a form, fill it out, send it to procurement, wait for pricing and then wait again for approval.

From start to finish, the old process would often take a week or more. Today, the ARCHIBUS and e-Procurement systems are linked directly to the warehouse and catalog of their parts supplier, Grainger.

“Now a part can be procured immediately when it used to take a week,” says Ms. Gombos. “There are no more lost requests for parts or orders. If something is stocked in the Grainger catalog, we can order it right away. If the item is not stocked, requests for sourcing can be entered in the system and then workflow rules route the request to Grainger to provide a quote. The manager can then approve it immediately.”

The award was announced at the recent 16th annual International ARCHIBUS Users’ Conference, held at the Walt Disney World Swan Hotel in Orlando, Florida. The event, attended by executives from corporations, governments, healthcare organizations, educational institutions and other sectors, is an opportunity to exchange ideas on more efficient management practices that reduce overall cost of occupancy, streamline business processes, lower energy use, and improve overall environmental sustainability.