Itasca, IL — May 13, 2003 — Boise Office Solutions, a distributor of office supplies, technology, furniture and paper, is offering customers a new set of free reports to help them pinpoint and analyze their purchasing activities as a way of driving down their overall cost of office product procurement.
Although office products typically represent 12 percent of companies' supply budgets, they can account for up to 70 percent of all procurement transactions and cost as much as 15 percent more than companies anticipate, according to Boise.
To attack this problem, Boise is offering "Customer Insight Reports" that capture a company's purchasing data down to the ordering activity of specific individuals and provide additional data analysis that identifies and recommends cost-saving opportunities.
"Our Customer Insight Reports go beyond the typical usage reports available in the industry today," said Chris Milliken, Boise Office Solutions' CEO and president. "Our reports give customers in-depth analysis down to the individual employee level and specific purchasing recommendations that drive time and cost savings."
Milliken said that Boise customers who currently using the reports have already realized overall cost savings of up to 30 percent.
Boise said that the reports, which are offered free to customers, can help companies by signaling where and when unauthorized spending occurs, and they can provide benchmarking analysis to show companies how their office product purchasing activities compare to those of other companies of similar size and within the same industry.
Using the benchmarking analysis, companies can identify whether they spend too much or too little in specific product categories. For example, a company can compare the amount of paper it purchases each month against other companies within the same industry and assess if it needs to implement ways to reduce its paper usage.
