Efficient and cost savings are the essence of smart procurement

A total of 184 resorts across South Africa either managed by a management group or run independently in conjunction with the relevant Homeowners association, creates a procurement opportunity that can be exploited for the benefit of both the owners and the potential suppliers of services.

Thus, RCI Southern Africa, South Africa`s leading national and international exchange company and owned by RCI, the world`s largest exchange company, has all the above mentioned resorts affiliated to it, and is ideally placed to establish a procurement hub to service these resorts, as well as other outlets and organisations within the leisure industry.

RCI Southern Africa embarked upon their preferred vendor programme several months ago and has been piloting a manual system very successfully for a year with a number of the resorts. The results showed that the resorts experienced better pricing on their procurements of at least 10%, even after allowing for the commissions paid to RCI; every appointed vendor experienced repeat sales; 62 of the resorts used more than one of the preferred suppliers and the average sales per vendor was close to R0.5 million starting from a near-zero base. Additionally, some of the vendors were creating new products or modifying existing offerings as a direct result of this initiative.

"Having made such headway with a manual system, we were keen to automate the process in order that the programme could be expanded more quickly to the rest of our affiliated resorts and the leisure industry in general," commented Sandy Begg, Executive Director Services of RCI Southern Africa. " We wanted to be able to include more vendors as well as introduce a host of other benefits".

"We evaluated several alternatives and found the solution from AXS-One to be ideal. It was the only offering that could offer a fully automated system that included a full end-to-end procurement cycle, and one that could replace the tedious manual process by the use of strong workflow processes and the integration of financials, regardless of which financials were being utilised by the individual resorts," continued Begg. "AXS-One also had a successful track record in the hospitality industry with procurement processes, for example, with La Quinta Inns in North America, and were extremely willing to be a partner in this initiative with its shared risks and shared rewards. Additionally, the AXS-One systems was the only one that could still aggregate the buying power of the resorts and take cognisance of the individualistic nature of resort processes."

A 50%/50% Joint Venture company, Hospitality Warehouse (Pty) Ltd., has been established between RCI Southern Africa and AXS-One SA, whereby the latter is responsible for the technology and the former for the procurement business and the associated servicing of the system users. The operation is already under way with the first resorts group starting their pilot later this month.

"We believe this Joint Venture is a Win/Win situation for both parties, and we at AXS-One are very bullish about its future," added Al Clegg, MD of AXS-One SA. "The local opportunities are immense, as the local leisure procurement spend is estimated to be in excess of R1 billion this year; and the international implications for both parties are potentially very exciting. Our vision for Hospitality Warehouse is that it becomes the leading procurement solutions provider for the leisure industry in Southern Africa."

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AXSPoint Solutions are available now. For further information, please contact Jacqui Copplestone, Marketing Manager on tel (011) 802-4998, fax (011) 802-5161, e-mail jcopplestone@axsone.com