Honeywell Streamlines Procurement
Procurement pro turned Citizen Developer creates his own apps to eliminate bottlenecks, improve on-time payments, and increase working capital by $10M.
Challenge: Emails Created a Black Hole Stopping the Procurement Process
When Bill started with Honeywell back in 2018, he faced many challenges overseeing procurement and operations, including lost information, employees working in silos, unanswered emails, blocked orders, and past due invoices that were affecting the company’s credit terms with suppliers.
The main problem was that many of these procurement processes were handled by email or word of mouth. “It was like a black hole effect of lost, unanswered, or ignored requests with no data,” he explained.
Particularly frustrating for Bill and the UOP team was invoice processing. A blocked invoice could take up to a week or more to get resolved with no one checking on it. These delays were common and caused the accrual of interest, which equated to lost money for the company. It also had the potential to cause outright credit holds which could limit the buying power of the team and even shut down supply lines.
Luckily for Honeywell, Bill knew automation could make the process better and had a magic bullet up his sleeve from experience at his previous company.
Solution: Driving Insights and Improvements With TrackVia
Bill had used TrackVia before and he knew how well it could work for his new team. However, it took some time to convince the company to get on board. “I told them I could do much more with less,” Bill stated. “I wound up being able to do the same amount of work with only eight people versus 13 and that became the driving factor for them to accept TrackVia.”
By no means a software developer, Bill was able to create a “Request for Support” case management application in a matter of days with TrackVia. His app tracked each request to completion in a central location. It also provided valuable structure and visibility to the procurement process and promoted collaboration and efficiency across the integrated supply chain.
Having the procurement process housed in a centralized application has made it much easier to address blocked purchase orders, track price changes and inflation, determine source and vendor issues, and identify supply risk. Anyone in the company could put in a request for support with a simple form. Automated instructions are supplied to the requester depending on the issue. All parts of the Request for Support process are tracked within Bill’s TrackVia app.
Bill can now easily assign tasks to his team members, who are automatically notified of their assignment in their “My Tasks” tab in the app. They can also be notified by email if they choose. Requesters can see the status of their request through the entire life cycle and are notified by an email with resolution notes once the request is closed.
Benefits: Reaping the Rewards of Visibility
Today, Bill’s team discusses ROI at their monthly operation meetings. One of the biggest benefits the team cites has been the elimination of nearly 600 emails a week. With all the data in one place, people no longer have to spend valuable time sifting through emails to hunt down information.
The app has also helped increase his team’s market knowledge, insight on pricing data, and overall invoice processing speed. Since implementing the app, his team has reduced credit holds by 25% and on-time payments have gone up by 2-3% each month since.
There has also been a significant reduction in supply issues. Prior to TrackVia, there were 300 blocked invoices a week, and now there are less than 100. Also, purchase order acknowledgment was around 30% whereas today it’s 76% and climbing.
Due to all these amazing results, Bill has been able to negotiate extended payment terms with many vendors and now has control over the entire procurement process. Bill estimates that all of this translates to $8-10 million in working capital improvements.
Conclusion: More Improvements and Benefits To Come
Bill’s vision and work isn’t done. He has bold plans to introduce TrackVia and his applications to more divisions throughout Honeywell. Although his application is only used by Bill’s team to manage procurement for the UOP division, he has already started setting it up for other divisions in the company.
Honeywell International Inc. is a multinational, Fortune 100 blue chip company that invents solutions to tackle some of the world’s toughest challenges. With a workforce of over 100,000 people across the globe, the company produces a variety of commercial and consumer products and engineering services and aerospace systems for a wide variety of customers, from private consumers to major corporations and governments.
If you’re ready to eliminate downtime and skyrocket your business’s potential, contact us today. TrackVia is the fastest, simplest, and most cost-effective way to transform your business— plus, it easily scales as you grow. Backed by the most-trusted and most intuitive low-code platform (and the industry’s best customer experience), you can rest assured knowing we’ll help you every step of the way.