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See how a critical community health center uses Wipfli’s eProcurement for Sage Intacct solution to speed and simplify its high volume of complex purchase orders.
The challenge
Dual order entry and complex approval workflows slow purchasing speed and increase the risk of accuracy issues.
To provide Sonoma County with quality care across multiple locations and specialties, Petaluma Health Center sources a high volume and wide range of medical and ancillary supplies.
The purchasing department kept its pipeline strong, but it came at a price. It often had to rekey orders placed on vendor sites into its ERP platform. Dental orders, which typically included 100+ line items, were especially prone to double-entry inefficiencies and rework. Orders created outside the department carried an even greater risk of line-item errors and coding issues related to locations, departments and GL accounts.
Petaluma needed a way to sustain gains in strategic sourcing while improving accuracy and efficiency across the purchasing process.
The solution
Wipfli developed the eProcurement for Sage Intacct solution to provide PunchOut technology, automated approval workflows and purchasing power directly within Petaluma’s ERP environment.
The Wipfli team expanded its business intelligence as Petaluma’s Sage Intacct implementation partner with a deep dive into Petaluma’s high-volume, line-item-heavy purchase order workflows. In collaboration with Petaluma and Sage Intacct, Wipfli:
- Created PunchOut functionality, turning supplier carts into order requisitions within Sage Intacct for review, approval and placement.
- Established easy-access, connected vendor shopping hubs for specialized users, like dental, while maintaining purchasing team quality control ownership.
- Configured approval workflows, transaction definitions and purchasing guardrails to support accurate coding, routing and validation before orders moved downstream.
- Aligned transaction definitions to support multiple approval paths by department, location and GL requirements.
- Tested and refined the solution until it supported Petaluma’s requirements.
Petaluma’s director of procurement, Kim Madsen, emphasized the impact of the approach: “Wipfli listened to truly understand our needs and then incorporated remedies to the greatest challenges directly within the eProcurement solution.”
The biggest impact has been time saved and increased order accuracy. We can now prevent mistakes instead of trying to fix them. Eliminating the back-and-forth communication and manual order rework has freed up time for my team to explore other cost-saving opportunities.
The results
Petaluma eliminated rework, increased order accuracy, automated controls and reduced purchase order cycle times.
With Wipfli’s help, Petaluma:
- Streamlined the entire procurement workflow by eliminating dual entry order placement.
- Gained an effective process and system to manage 2,800+ orders across 70+ vendors.
- Saw savings beyond dual order entry, including reductions in tracking down errors, fixing transactions and dealing with downstream issues.
- Saved 3+ hours each week on processing dental orders and 2+ hours per month on rework of order/invoice coding errors.
- Stopped downstream issues for AP on invoice matching.
- Grew confidence among users that orders are accurate and aligned with purchasing guidelines.
- Increased coordination across purchasing, finance and departments that generate orders for its supplies.
- Freed capacity to focus on strategic sourcing, cost-saving opportunities and process improvements.
Madsen stressed, “Addressing the purchasing challenges helps us keep our costs down. We can take those savings and reinvest them in the organization to reach and provide our community with needed healthcare and services.”
With Wipfli’s support, Petaluma gained a more connected, controlled and efficient procurement workflow — one that saves time, improves accuracy and helps the purchasing team focus on strategic sourcing work.