The Challange

Kathi Weldon is the Manager for Tower Federal Credit Union, a member-owned non-profit financial institution with headquarters in Laurel, MD. Kathi began her career with Tower in the accounts payable department. Two years later, she was promoted to the position of purchasing coordinator. After several more years, Kathi became the Purchasing Supervisor. She is responsible for ordering supplies for 400 people. Kathi says, “When I first came on board Bellwether had just been implemented, but we hadn’t started to use it yet. We were dealing with so much paper, it was overwhelming.

Company: Tower Federal Credit Union
Industry : Financial
Location : Laurel, Maryland
Company Size : 400+

Time Saving Through Automation

“We purchased the Purchasing, Inventory and RECEIVING modules and did some customization. Automation was new for us, but once we had processes automated, we realized so much time savings and so much less paper. We loved it when the new version came along because it gave us so much more maneuverability. We have not yet implemented the Requisitions module, so the requisitions are paper forms with lots of copies, and sign-off approval goes through inter- office mail.”

Kathi is hoping to implement the Requisitions module to have an end-to-end system. She stated, “requisitions come from all our local service facilities. They are supposed to reach me already approved by the approval hierarchy in that facility. It all goes through interoffice mail, and often we have to send the requisitions back because they are lacking the proper description, the proper sign off, etc. All of this takes a long time. We really need to automate this part of the process.”

The Strategy

Growth and expansion to other regions is always a challenge. Having a single software that can give “real time” accounts of inventory and purchases was a priority to help streamline internal processes and save valuable time.

Bellwether focussed on delivering an all in one procurement software system and highlighted the following features to immediately alleviate their pain points;

Track everything in one system. This included; purchase orders, quotes, vendor login, invoices and inventory tracking for all their items for each of their locations.
Integrated inventory tracking solution.
QuickBooks integration so they could easily link up to their accounting software.
Bellwether needed to ensure the new software could easily import all of their current data.
The software needed to be able to input and pull information from two different data sets which included their old procurement software and their asset and inventory tracking software.

“The reports that Bellwether Purchasing Software provides in inventory, receiving and purchasing are invaluable tools, like the PO status report. Anyone looking to save time, paper and labor should invest in Bellwether. We have been a customer since the late 80’s. We like the new releases that keep us up to date. We like the expertise of the technical service department. The technical service staff is very dedicated and knowledgeable. We are looking forward to implementing more modules because we like the product,”

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