Client Situation

A metropolitan school district had approximately 1,200 union custodians that purchased supply materials for their schools — grades K–12.  Based on square footage of the schools, the Board of Education gave custodians an annual allocation to be spent on supplies and material for small maintenance tasks.  The custodians were given access to city and state contracts, however there was no customized catalog of contracted parts.  While they were provided recommended lists of suppliers or hard copy packets of brands, in general they could buy product wherever they liked. The only rule was they had to follow the three-bid process for purchases over $250 and forward the paperwork to the Auditor General. 

The paperwork and process for ordering materials was inefficient and ineffective. Management information and reporting regarding brand preferences across the district, products purchased by school size, or dollars spent by product category were not readily available. 

The Challenge

The district wanted to consolidate brands and leverage the school supply spend across the 1,200 facilities operated by custodians who had been autonomous for decades.  The goal was to implement processes and controls that would encourage compliance and establish reporting that would be used for further improvements as the program progressed.  In addition, the district required a more efficient reporting system to improve the burdensome audit process.

SDI Solution

Working with the Board of Education, and with input from the custodians, SDI created a customized supply catalog that provided a broad selection of materials typically used in the custodian’s day-to-day work.  Orders for supplies were placed by faxing supplied order forms, which were read by an OCR machine or by calling SDI’s Customer Service Center.

SDI maintained a running balance for each school, summarizing the amount of allocation money that had been spent and the value remaining.  Detailed monthly statements were sent to the custodians for the materials delivered to the schools and with invoices sent directly to the board. 

The program continues to be refined to implement controls that provide consistent pricing on repetitive non-catalog items. A process was established to add those items to the subsequent catalog updates to improve the time to process orders and leverage for best pricing.  Each year the data is analyzed, with brands continuing to be consolidated and products standardized to leverage the spend and optimize the buying power of the board. 

An online catalog, including visibility to order status, account balance, and delivery tracking information, was also made available for the custodians to access.

SDI’s Results

By implementing a customized catalog for the district, high-use materials are now easily ordered by the custodians with consistent pricing maintained across all of the schools. Eliminated is the three-bid process required for material purchases, as all catalog items have already been pre-approved.

Monthly reporting of usage by school, by SKU, by category, and even by school size (based on square footage) is provided to the Board of Education.  This information enables the district to make more informed decisions regarding school maintenance, and has been used to identify spending patterns across “like” schools, capital equipment availability, potential product consolidation or standardization, and program improvements such as scheduled replenishment.

With allocation balances for the custodians managed by SDI, and with electronic monthly invoices provided to the board, SDI has streamlined the inefficient paper trail previously used to bring a more efficient audit process. 

With the streamlining of the entire program for the district, SDI has been able to reduce the total cost of providing custodian supplies to the district while increasing visibility and efficiencies.