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The staff at Kennedy Krieger Institute is dedicated to helping children with neurological disorders improve their lives and unraveling the mysteries of children’s brains. The staff had a great diversity in their product needs and purchasing patterns. Items were purchased at the department level. The items were either purchased using a purchase order or with a check request after the products were received.
The finance department had been speaking to management about an automated purchasing system for over three years. “Our staff was frustrated because they spent their time manually filling purchase requests and waiting on approvals instead of helping children or doing research,” said Peggy Fong, Assistant Controller.
Finance wanted a single software system that would manage check requests, purchase orders and expense reimbursements. Under their paper-based system, when an individual needed to purchase work materials they would fill out either a purchase order or purchase the item and submit a check request when the invoice arrived.
After searching for several months, Verian Technologies soon began to stand out among the vendors under consideration. The team from Verian took an unusually deep interest in understanding Kennedy Krieger’s needs, even before they began talking about their solution.
Verian was able to provide an integrated suite of applications that were very close to meeting 100% of Kennedy Kriegers’ needs. Purchase Manager, Invoice Automation and Expense Manager were the three modules that gave users the capability of generating purchase orders, check requests and processing expense reimbursements through a single application with one common user interface.
Although Kennedy Krieger Institute rolled the system out over the course of 24 months, the benefits were felt almost immediately. Managers gained a clearer understanding of where their actual spending is verses budget. The percentage of purchases made using purchase orders increased by about over 50% — a significant reduction in “maverick spending.” Audit trails improved because all received items are entered into the system — creating a quick and easy three-way match.
Kennedy Krieger Institute considers Verian Technologies a strong partner. “Verian is a very friendly vendor that is much more helpful with technical support questions than other software vendors,” said Fong. “But what is most important is our staff now can spend more time focused on healing sick children and less time on administrative work.”