Johnstone Supply Deploys ServiceTitan HVACR Inventory Procurement Solution

“Integrating our two best-in-class technologies addresses a key ongoing pain point for contractors,” said Ara Mahdessian, co-founder and CEO of ServiceTitan. “The traditional interaction between contractors and distributors requires multiple software programs and even pen and paper, making it a tedious process that has a high risk of errors. This partnership delivers a groundbreaking solution that modernizes the workflow between contractors and suppliers.”

By streamlining product information, pricing, purchase orders, and payments, ServiceTitan and Johnstone now offer contractors an optimized workflow that can save them time and money.

“This is an innovation that fits well with our ‘making it easier to do business’ mission,” said Mike Chill, CIO of Johnstone Supply. “This collaboration provides Service Titan customers an opportunity to move into the future with increased efficiency, streamlined information, and easy payments that can help companies grow.”

Procure2Pay is provided at no charge to existing ServiceTitan users, and incorporated into the ServiceTitan platform. Leslie Gildea, vice president, development growth at ServiceTitan, spoke with Contracting Business about its many advantages.

Eliminating Busy Work

“Procure-2-Pay is an end-to-end workflow, offering access to real time product information and contractor-specific pricing, through integrated vendor catalogs. It also has the ability to electronically send purchase orders to distributors, manage invoices, and through a new accounts payable reconciliation workflow, make simple electronic payments to distributors without every having to leave the ServiceTitan system,” Gildea explained.

Much thought and actual research of existing distributors across the US helped ServiceTitan to focus on particular pain points related to inventory management.

“We really thought about how we could help streamline the procurement process for contractors, and how we can reduce friction they currently experience when working with distributors. That’s where Procure-2-Pay was born, from a desire to reduce friction and make it more efficient for contractors and distributors,” Gildea said.

ServiceTitan conducted an industry survey of distributor territory managers and inside sales people at distributors broadly, and found that distributorship territory managers spend almost half of their day dealing with purchase orders, status updates and returns; and inside sales people receive 70 percent of their purchase orders by phone or email, which requires them to manually extract that information and upload it into their own ERP.

“Because we’re now automating so many of those there will be value for Johnstone Supply, because we’re giving them back that time,” Gildea said.

“For contractors, we’re automating the entire process, making it easier for a multitude of contracting business personas, including pricebook administrators, technicians and comfort advisors, purchasing managers, inventory managers and accounts payable teams. This gives them time back so they can focus on more important work, and less time on busy work, double entry, and provide business owners with he opportunity to scale their operations for growth. We believe this workflow will allow contractors to do more with less effort. In addition, the contractors’ greatest cost is labor, so this will help reduce the amount of time spent ‘buying stuff,’ and direct their time to things that will drive revenue.”

Procure2Pay’s key components are integrated supplier catalogs, integrated purchasing and accounts payable/automated reconciliation. The integrated supplier catalog feature will eliminate confusion and inaccuracy related to the pricing of systems and components.

“When a contractor has to build up their price book, that is usually done manually, if they’re bringing in product information and specific pricing,” Gildea said. “Their vendor is not necessarily updating that regularly. And, when we’ve spoken with contractors, they’ve told us they don’t update their contractor-specific pricing with distributors very often; usually it’s once a year or every two years or more. We’ve integrated that for them, so that they can stay up-to-date with the distributor’s full catalog, including product images and detailed product information so technicians and comfort advisors can find it when they’re pulling up product information for homeowners. It also includes product marketing descriptions, which convey product value to the homeowner. We also provide real-time alerts when catalog content changes.

“Because it’s integrated there is instant access to cost updates, without having to manage or manually update cumbersome spread sheets. It ensures that mark-ups and margins are maintained,” Gildea continued.

Using the integrated purchasing feature, contractors can generate a purchase order with more confidence that the date is

accurate, facilitate a real-time inventory check prior to submitting the purchase order, and submit the purchase order directly to Johnstone Supply’s system.