Eliminating Manual PO Delivery from the Purchasing Department

The Organization 

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District serves 49 schools comprised of approximately 19,000 students located over a geographic area the size of the state of West Virginia. With over 3,000 vendors located in their home state of Alaska and elsewhere in the US and Canada, “Mat-Su” requires professional and prompt communication with vendors and internal personnel.

The Problem

The purchasing department at Mat-Su processes an average of 65 to 90 purchase orders daily, including distributing copies of each order to the buyer (the school) and the vendor. This was a manual process, but the purchasing department soon realized they could save time and money by automating PO delivery. Mat-Su’s IT Department was able to generate a simple solution utilizing a fax modem that worked with their existing CIMS system.

When the school district decided to purchase Sungard’s BusinessPLUS ERP solution (formally known as IFAS), the purchasing department again requested that automated fax delivery be added to the project’s scope. They had become accustomed to their improved performance and were not interested in reverting to manual delivery of purchase orders. SunGard recommended AventX from STR Software to meet the automated delivery requirement for the school district.

The Solution

Once up and running, the purchasing department users soon realized the benefits of the advanced features available to them. Users now get delivery status notifications of their purchase orders via email. If an order fails to deliver, the email lets the user quickly investigate and correct the issue. On the rare occasion that a user cannot address the failed delivery themselves, Justin Michaud, Mat-Su’s IT Department Supervisor, can access a complete audit trail of all documents sent through the system via a web interface that is easy to use.

Soon after the implementation, Michaud was informed that specific requests required the purchasing department to manually fax a copy of the purchase order to the warehouse in addition to the buyer and vendor. Making simple configuration changes to AventX, the technical services team at STR Software added the warehouse as an additional destination for the purchase order delivery. With that issue resolved, AventX eliminates over 95% of all manual faxing by the purchasing department.

Mat-Su chose AventX for its tight integration with BusinessPLUS. As customers, they are also pleased with the level of support offered by STR Software. “I would definitely buy AventX again,” says Michaud. “I’d certainly recommend AventX to other BusinessPLUS users, too. The process of delivering our purchase orders to our suppliers and staff is much easier and more reliable. AventX delivers purchase orders to several destinations, saving our purchasing department valuable time. They love it, and so do I.”