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"Before, we used to hand-write purchase orders," he said.
"The orders coming in from the field were largely via phone
call or maybe a fax machine. We really didn't have laptops
out there in the field at the time, but even if we did, the order
would then have to be written out and then faxed or emailed
to a vendor."
There was some tracking of purchase orders using phase
codes, but it was also a slow process, waiting on the orders
to be received, submitted and fulfilled before they could be
reasonably tracked. Additionally, Pieper-Houston did not
have the depth in the phase code tracking it wanted to.
When the company began tying together different areas
of its operations—accounting, project management,
purchasing, etc.—with Trimble Viewpoint's Spectrum,
Thomas realized he could further streamline operations by
making it easier to generate purchase orders.
"I created a form with about 300 of our most common items
that our technicians order day to day. Basically, all they do
is scroll down the list of common items, put a quantity by
what they want, and create a material list and send that to
our purchasing department," Thomas said. "Our purchasing
department then creates a purchase order and sends it to
our vendors. The vendors send back a confirmation and then
a purchase order is created.
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