This manufacturer builds and operates electric scooters and bicycles in more than 70 cities and college campuses across the world. The company had centralized all buying into a small procurement team which ordered all  supplies for 30 warehouses and the corporate office assuring they got everything from tools and equipment to janitorial supplies and IT needs.  

Managers from the 30 warehouses and corporate offices would email purchase requests to the procurement team—sometimes sending multiple emails each day. The procurement team would then produce and deliver purchase requests to their contracted suppliers, spending several days per week creating orders and tracking deliveries. Sourcing new vendors, negotiating better prices or nurturing current supplier relationships couldn’t happen.  

“Our old way of doing things was very manual and resource intensive. We needed a more efficient process to automate a lot of the manual tasks, and then show us our monthly or average spending. Solutions we were looking at were very expensive to implement. Varis came with very low risk, which made our leadership team much more willing to try.” 

Solution 

This mobility manufacturer implemented the Varis solution in a phased rollout approach to assure smooth adoption and utilization.  

  1. Phase one: Configure the Varis platform and onboard all company suppliers into the Varis platform. 
  2. Phase two: Add Varis managed suppliers to the platform. 
  3. Phase three: Onboarded company’s purchasers to Varis, using the procurement team as approvers.  
  4. Training was done via an online video tutorial of the Varis platform and a 60-minute meeting and rolled out to a few warehouses at a time. As the team rolled out the Varis solutions, they realized adoption was happening much faster than anticipated and they could speed up the entire adoption process. 

“The Varis implementation was seamless. Everybody got Varis immediately since it functions like any other e-commerce site. Very simple to use, the user interface was well received, and everyone enjoyed how the approval process was faster so that orders could be fulfilled quicker.” 

Results

Once Varis was implemented, instead of sending purchase requests and waiting for a response, warehouse managers could now access the customized Varis purchasing platform directly. This direct access empowered each buyer, reduced frustration and wait times for needed supplies. Similarly, the procurement team now only needed to review and approve the purchase—freeing them up to focus on more strategic and higher value work.  

Today, new orders are being placed daily by managers in the warehouse, and the procurement team is doing more approving and analyzing instead of checking items off a shopping list.  

“With Varis all our suppliers are in one place, warehouse managers can order on the fly and get their purchases on time. This platform and the support are great. Varis has helped our team tremendously.”