Office Max!

To compete with Office Max more effectively, Office Depot introduced a new invoice procssing capability for its customers. This article goes into detail on the decision to implement this new capability and its payback for Office Depot and its customers.

With over $12 billion in annual revenues and more than 50,000 employees, Office Depot is one of the world's largest providers of office products. The company operates nearly a thousand stores in 23 countries, supported by 22 delivery centers, more than 60 local sales offices and 13 regional call centers. With over $2.6 billion in annual sales, Office Depot is also the world's second largest online retailer.

Challenge

With equally large and highly aggressive competitors in Staples and Office Max, Office Depot knew that they could not compete on price or assortment alone and needed its own advantage in the marketplace. And as the number of Office Depot customers has grown dramatically over the past several years, the cost, complexity and manpower to service this customer base, especially the business clients, had increased as well. These business customers (mom n' pop operations to Fortune 500 companies) represent a highly profitable and vital segment for Office Depot.

Office Depot established there BSDnet B-to-B online network to enable business customers to shop, order, and manage shipments online. While these customers were able to buy online, they were unable to view account activity, parse and distribute invoices at the department or cost center level, route invoices for approval or pay for supplies via the Internet. By addressing the "back-office workflow needs" of their online business customers, Office Depot knew they would have a competitive advantage in the market. For this service to be successful, it had to meet three key criteria: