The SuiteCommerce cloud-based solution has enabled nearly $1 billion of annual transactions, connecting 4,700 buyers from state agencies and local governments to more than 1,000 vendors selling 3.5 million items, from office equipment to road paving materials. With SuiteCommerce, the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts (CPA) delivers a modern and intuitive B2C experience to all TxSmartBuy users. The superior procurement experience and the system’s improved efficiency has helped drive rapid adoption among both buyers and sellers. User adoption is expected to increase from 4,700 buyers in 2015 to more than 6,900 in 2017. “The tool essentially sells itself,” said Michael Telfeyan, Division Director at the CPA Project Management Office. “So many organizations and state agencies use the tool that vendors are incentivized to get on there and give the best possible price. That’s the real value. And we have more functionality planned. We’re going to flex NetSuite as much as we possibly can.”
TxSmartBuy 2.0 went live in 2014 and replaced a collection of on-premise systems in place since 2008 that were costly to maintain. In just one year, annual system costs have plummeted 77 percent from $11.5 million to less than $3 million. Other benefits include:
- Help desk staff reduced by more than 50 percent
- Average support call reduced from 30-45 minutes to less than five minutes
- Average time to place an order reduced from 10 minutes to three minutes
The previous system suffered from issues with usability, search functionality, scalability and speed. Lack of integration slowed key business processes, made it difficult to make system upgrades and forced personnel into labor-intensive spreadsheet manipulations and manual reporting to piece together critical spending data.
“There was a lot of glue under the hood to try to make it work,” said Telfeyan. “If one piece of software had to be upgraded, it would impact the others. The user experience wasn’t that great because of lags between all the components. NetSuite has been unbelievably more flexible, intuitive, faster and more responsive.”
