Cozen O’Connor
Bringing 100% spend visibility to a $470 million law firm
How Cozen O’Connor found an unparalleled partner for strategic sourcing and accessed granular financial data with Order.
About
With over 400 employees across 21 global offices, Cozen O’Connor is a full-service law firm with nationally recognized practices in litigation, business law, and government relations. A decision was made three years ago to choose a major big-box retailer as the primary office supply vendor despite the high retail markups and minimal reporting capabilities.
INDUSTRY
Professional services
COMPANY SIZE
29 Locations
"Order’s analytics are tremendous."
ELLSWORTH BAPTISTE
NATIONAL OPERATIONS MANAGER, COZEN O’CONNOR
Ellsworth Baptiste is the National Operations Manager at Cozen O’Connor. In this role, he is responsible for managing the operations and purchasing across all their offices.
"We were in desperate need of an integrated, easy-to-use platform to really take our procurement to the next level.”
| INVOICE OVERLOAD | Over a million invoices every year with no organized payment process |
| MANUAL AP PROCESSES | Slow and costly 3-way match process—with thousands of receipts |
| LACK OF SPEND VISIBILITY | Frequent “surprise” invoices and lack of control over each location's spend |
Without the ability to consolidate, organize, or filter historical purchasing data, there was no easy way for Cozen to understand spend per product, location, or category. Furthermore, relying on one vendor for all purchasing led to a significant information and buying-power disadvantage. Cozen was faced with renewing a contract at a higher rate than they previously paid, without the tools and data to effectively re-negotiate.
“Order’s integration with Workday has saved our teams so many extra steps. It’s really been a game-changer for us.”
With the goal of gaining more visibility into their spend and finding a cost-effective purchasing partner, in 2016 Cozen O’Connor chose Order as their trusted purchasing and payment solution.
Very quickly, Cozen O'Connor was able to successfully integrate Order into their operations—centralizing their purchasing process, automating vendor payments, and nurturing global expansion—across 18 countries, and counting.
Line-level spend visibility and compliance
Yearly strategic sourcing savings
The
Outcome
AN UNPARALLELED PARTNER FOR STRATEGIC SOURCING
It took less than 24 hours for the Order platform to identify over 10% in cost reduction opportunities, without the need to replace preferred products or brands. “Nationally, we’re saving upwards of $5-6k per month just on products. The platform lets you save a lot of money," Ellsworth recalls, "We’re still buying what we were before, just at a discount.”
ACCESSIBLE, GRANULAR DATA
Granular reporting and data became available at any time in the Order dashboard. Managers were able to see spend by location, vendor, and product, and were easily able to make purchasing decisions. "Order’s analytics are tremendous," Ellsworth Baptiste, National Operations Manager, recalls, "We couldn’t get anything nearly as granular from our vendors. The reporting on the data can be as granular as you want... by location, practice group, or category. It offers much more data than any vendor.”
Order helped automate budgeting and reporting, reduced paper consumption, and promoted company-wide transparency. With lower manual data entry risk, managers could accurately understand exactly what was bought, who approved it, and when the invoice was paid with just a few clicks.
Words of Advice from ELLSWORTH
“It always comes down to the people. Order has a great team. The responsiveness, courteousness and friendliness of their customer service is not something you come across often these days.”