Bashas' Advances Procurement Performance, Sourcing Processes

Bashas’ Family of Stores has renewed its contract for e-sourcing services from Intesource. The partnership – now in its sixth year - enables the Arizona-based family-owned grocery chain to achieve greater transparency and efficiency in procurement as well as uncovering new value across all aspects of its sourcing processes.

The companies work to get the best value from suppliers and maintain control over pricing, terms and service levels. This approach has led to tremendous process efficiencies, particularly in collecting information from vendors and bringing a wider variety of categories to auction, according to Jim Buhr, CFOand chief innovation officer for the operator of 115 stores under such banners as Bashas’, Bashas’ Dine, Food City, AJ’s Fine Foods and Eddie’s Country Store.

“Providing our customers with high-quality products at an affordable price is very important to us,” he said. “We are better positioned to source new categories, scale operations on demand, and uncover new savings and supply sources that we can pass on directly to our customers.”

He said Bashas’ has executed thousands of sourcing projects and secured millions in savings. For example:

• 21.3 percent savings on rotisserie chicken ovens 
• 54.6 percent savings on pharmacy receivables management
• 22.0 percent savings on Cisco 4G devices
• 42.1 percent savings on foil bakeware
• 36.9 percent savings on custom dinner napkins

“Grocery retailers are under immense pressure to maintain customer loyalty by keeping prices low and value high,” said Brian Miller, VP of strategic services at Intesource, a Proactis company. “With the grocery industry today as competitive and volatile as ever, procurement needs to become the stabilizing function, enabling organizations to produce better margins, offer more compelling products, reduce risk and create efficiencies across the entire business.”