Assisted living facilities operate in an environment where unprecedented cost pressures meet explosive growth demands, making efficient, automated procurement essential for your facility's survival and scalability. The sector is expanding rapidly while simultaneously grappling with rising operational costs that threaten your margins and care quality.

The global assisted living market is projected to reach $189.73 billion in 2026, up from $180.02 billion in 2025. This growth creates exciting opportunities for your organization but also demands operational infrastructure that can scale efficiently. Meanwhile, medical care costs have surged dramatically since 2000, outpacing overall consumer inflation and putting enormous pressure on your facility budgets.

As a multi-location operator, you juggle staffing shortages, regulatory complexity, and the constant challenge of maintaining consistent care standards across facilities. Manual procurement processes create bottlenecks that ripple through your operations, affecting everything from resident satisfaction to financial performance. Specialized procurement software has evolved from a nice-to-have utility into a strategic asset for your cost control and operational excellence.

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Why generic purchasing tools fail senior care providers

Generic business tools and manual procurement methods lack the controls, compliance features, and visibility required to manage the complex, multi-location supply chains of senior living facilities. What works for a single-location business falls apart when applied to the unique demands of assisted living operations.

Decentralized purchasing across locations often results in chaos. When each facility maintains its own vendor relationships, organizations experience vendor duplication, inconsistent pricing for identical supplies, and zero leverage in contract negotiations. According to Baker Tilly, dispersed vendor management compounds procurement challenges because, without central visibility, leaders cannot analyze buying behavior or leverage purchasing power effectively.

Generic tools also miss the mark on compliance requirements. Assisted living facilities operate under strict state-level regulations governing everything from medical supplies to food service. Standard procurement software lacks the pre-approved catalogs and guardrails needed to ensure every purchase meets healthcare safety standards and organizational policies.

Manual requisition processes sent through email, tracked in spreadsheets, and approved via disconnected workflows create visibility gaps that make it impossible to track budgets in real-time or identify savings opportunities. Finance teams struggle to answer basic questions without hours of manual reconciliation across multiple systems and invoice stacks.

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Order.co: The best procurement software for assisted living

Order.co delivers a unified, AI-powered platform that automates your compliance, drastically reduces your AP workload, and actively lowers your supply costs. Unlike generic business tools or legacy systems, Order.co was purpose-built for multi-location assisted living businesses with complex supply chains and high-stakes compliance requirements.

Unified catalog for centralized control

Order.co consolidates all your vendor categories into a single curated marketplace, eliminating your need to switch between dozens of vendor websites or manage separate ordering portals for each supplier. As a result, your facility can:

• Consolidate all vendors (medical, food service, office, and maintenance) into one curated marketplace
• Enable compliant purchasing through permission-based catalogs that meet healthcare standards
• Empower your employees to order what they need while maintaining total HQ visibility and control
• Enforce brand standards and quality requirements without manual oversight

Consolidated billing eliminates AP chaos

Order.co's consolidated billing reduces the number of invoices your AP team manages by over 50x, transforming the invoice overload of 100s of monthly payments into a single, weekly or monthly bill with complete line-item detail. This delivers immediate operational benefits:

• Reduce hundreds of invoices to consolidated weekly or monthly bills with line-item detail
• Eliminate manual 3-way matching and OCR processing entirely
• Free your AP teams from processing dozens of vendor payments, saving hours per week
• Capture all data at point of purchase for pre-approved, accurate invoicing
• Push invoice data directly to your ERP or accounting system (NetSuite, QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, or Workday)

Order.co AI actively reduces supply costs

Order.co AI analyzes products and compares prices across the vendor network while your employees shop, automatically identifying cost-effective alternatives that deliver an average of 5% direct product savings without requiring manual RFP processes. The AI sourcing engine allows your facility to:

• Scan a network of 40,000+ vendors to identify cost-effective alternatives for your essential supplies
• Achieve an average of 5% direct product savings across all your purchases
• Combat rising medical care costs proactively without compromising quality or resident care
• Leverage predictive analytics to forecast your supply needs based on historical usage
• Receive automated recommendations for cost savings during your purchasing process

Automated compliance and approval workflows

Order.co enforces your purchasing policies and budgets at the point of purchase, before spend occurs, ensuring every transaction aligns with your organization's compliance requirements and financial goals. These automated controls provide comprehensive governance, allowing you to:

• Establish property-level budgets that give your facility managers autonomy while maintaining centralized oversight
• Ensure regulatory compliance and audit readiness with complete purchase documentation
• Create pre-approved workflows that match your organizational structure and approval hierarchy
• Maintain complete audit trails for state inspections and financial reviews

Comparing specialized P2P software vs. legacy ERPs for assisted living facilities

Specialized procure-to-pay solutions offer significantly faster implementation, better user experience, and lower total cost of ownership compared to legacy ERP systems. While legacy ERP systems provide robust accounting capabilities, they are often too rigid, expensive, and complex for your agile procurement needs as a growing assisted living network.

Implementation speed and complexity

Many enterprise ERP implementations stretch 6 to 12+ months and require expensive consultants. However, with Order.co, your facility can:

• Deploy in weeks with guided onboarding vs. 6 to 12+ months for enterprise systems
• Access white-glove implementation support vs. expensive third-party consultants
• Achieve faster ROI through immediate cost savings and reduced AP labor
• Onboard vendors in days, not months, with managed network support
• Start seeing savings in the first 90 days, not after a year-long implementation

User adoption and interface

Traditional ERPs were built for accountants and financial analysts, not your facility managers ordering daily supplies. Order.co provides marketplace-style interfaces that your employees understand intuitively, driving high adoption without extensive training.  This means that your team can:

• Navigate marketplace-style interfaces intuitively
• Order supplies as easily as shopping online, increasing adoption across your locations
• Access mobile-friendly platforms that work for your on-the-go facility managers
• Reduce training time from weeks to hours with user-friendly design

Vendor management agility

ERPs require rigid supplier master data setup with IT involvement for every new vendor. With Order.co, you can onboard vendors in days versus the weeks or months required for ERP supplier setup. The platform empowers you to:

• Manage both online and local suppliers in 1 unified platform
• Eliminate the need for complex punchout catalogs or EDI connections
• Add new suppliers without IT involvement or system configuration

Cost structure and ROI

Enterprise systems carry high licensing fees plus ongoing consulting costs that can exceed 6 figures annually. By contrast, Order.co delivers ROI in months through direct product savings, reduced AP labor, and elimination of manual processes.  The financial benefits are clear:

• Avoid 6-figure licensing fees and ongoing consulting retainers
• Achieve ROI in months, not years, through direct product savings
• Reduce AP processing costs by 50x through consolidated billing
• Eliminate hidden costs like consultant fees and custom development

Why clinical management systems fall short on spend control

Clinical management systems excel at resident care documentation but lack the strategic sourcing and AP automation capabilities needed for effective procurement. While EHR platforms are essential for care delivery, they were never designed to optimize procurement spend or automate accounts payable.

EHR and clinical software platforms focus on resident health records, medication management, care plans, and compliance documentation. However, their basic inventory modules don't provide the strategic sourcing capabilities, AI-powered cost optimization, or vendor consolidation features that drive procurement efficiency.

When purchasing data lives siloed in clinical systems, finance teams experience blind spots. CFOs and controllers lack real-time visibility into spend patterns, budget performance, and cost-saving opportunities. This fragmentation makes it impossible to answer strategic questions about vendor performance or category spending.

Clinical software vendors aren't in the business of negotiating supply contracts or managing vendor networks. They don't offer the AI sourcing engines, consolidated billing features, or AP automation that reduce operational costs and free finance teams from administrative busywork.

Best practice for assisted living operators: integrate a dedicated P2P platform like Order.co alongside clinical systems for complete operational control. Let your EHR handle resident care while specialized procurement software handles vendor management, strategic sourcing, and financial operations. This approach gives you the best of both worlds — excellent care delivery and excellent spend control.

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Making the switch: Implementation considerations for assisted living operators

Your successful implementation involves assessing vendor relationships, planning phased rollouts, and establishing property-level budgets before launch. Here's how you can ensure a smooth transition that minimizes disruption and maximizes adoption across your facilities.

Start by assessing your current vendor relationships and identifying consolidation opportunities. 

Map all your existing suppliers, evaluate performance and pricing, and determine which relationships to maintain versus which to optimize through your new platform.

Plan a phased rollout across your locations to minimize operational disruption and learn from early adopters. Begin with 2 to 3 pilot facilities that have strong leadership buy-in, then expand to additional locations based on lessons learned and success metrics.

Leverage vendor onboarding support to migrate your catalogs quickly without overwhelming your procurement team. Leading platforms like Order.co provide white-glove service to onboard all your vendors into a single marketplace.

Establish your property-level budgets and approval workflows before launch to ensure compliance from day 1. Configure the system to match your existing approval hierarchies, spending limits, and purchasing policies so your employees understand the new process immediately.

Simplify your assisted living facility’s procure-to-pay processes

Businesses in the assisted living sector demand procurement capabilities that can scale along with them while actively combating cost pressures. Legacy purchasing tools and manual processes that might have sufficed years ago now create compliance risks, strain the finance team’s capacity, and leave potential savings on the table.

Order.co helps you overcome these shortcomings. From AI-powered sourcing that delivers measurable cost reductions to consolidated billing that transforms AP workloads, every feature is designed to solve the specific challenges you face daily. As you evaluate your procurement technology stack, the question isn't whether to modernize, but whether you can afford not to. Your residents deserve excellent care, your staff deserves efficient tools, and your bottom line deserves the protection that intelligent automation provides.

Schedule a demo to see how Order.co can modernize your assisted living facility's procurement and discover how operators cut costs, ensure compliance, and gain complete spend visibility across all locations.

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