Avanto Helps Streamline Operations at MillerKnoll Dealer OFI
Mehmet Bakkaloglu
Chief Financial Officer
“Since engaging Avanto about three years ago, they have become an invaluable resource, to make sure we are using technology effectively and help us maintain our competitive edge.”
After nearly ten years as Chief Financial Officer at MillerKnoll dealer OFI in Newington, CT, Mehmet Bakkaloglu has a pretty good idea of what it takes to keep an office furniture dealership strong and growing.
Close to the top of his list of requirements is a commitment to keeping up to speed on technology and taking advantage of every opportunity to use it to keep the dealership competitive and profitable.
The good news for Bakkaloglu and the rest of the OFI team is that since engaging the Avanto consulting organization to provide support on strategic planning, process improvement and outsourcing services, they have a resource who can help them do all that and more!
“Technology is probably the most important strategic resource for a dealership like ours and Matt Danyliw and his team at Avanto play a key role in helping us find ways we can use technology to streamline operations and strengthen our position in the market,” he says.
“As CFO, it’s just too easy to get buried in the routine, day to day activities so you don’t have the time to keep up with all the technological advancements that can help our business,” Bakkaloglu points out.
For example, before Bakkaloglu brought in Avanto, getting delivery tickets to trigger billing on projects could take a couple of weeks. Now, through the automated workflows introduced to OFI by Avanto, it all gets done in just two days and the dealership’s accounting staff is able to manage by exception instead of spending valuable time on repetitive, low-value activities.
Avanto’s impact on vouchering for accounts payables at OFI has been just as positive, Bakkaloglu reports. “Before Avanto, our A/P person used to spend as much as four hours every day vouchering supplier invoices. Avanto automated most of that process and got the clerical activities off her desk, so that now all she has to do is review the work and again manage by exception in a far more productive way.”
Avanto installed a bot on our business system that streamlined the way our designers report their hours
“Time and time again, Avanto has enabled our people to cut back on routine, non-value generating activities and focus instead on their core work,” Bakkaloglu says.
Key to Avanto’s ability to do that, he says, is the extensive industry experience of their team and their exposure to dealer best practices across a broad range of dealer types and alignments.
“When I brought in Avanto to help us out, I didn’t have to explain our industry or how our business works,” he says. “They came to us with an in-depth understanding of dealer operations in general, expert knowledge of Khameleon and its strengths and weaknesses and plenty of great ideas to improve our processes and procedures drawn from previous work they had done with other dealerships.”
For Bakkaloglu, Avanto is far more than just another vendor. “We work with Avanto today as a true partner and that partnership is only going to become more important going forward. They know the industry, they know our dealership and we know we can rely on them to keep us strong, no matter what the market throws at us!”
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