A Manual Process Reaching Its Breaking Point
When Brad Smith, SVP of Procurement & Sales first stepped into the procurement role at Southwest Traders, he inherited a department that ran almost entirely by hand.
Buyers created purchase orders inside an old Mark Information Systems AS/400-based ERP. The system stored historical usage but provided no forecasting and no actual guidance. To build a PO, a buyer had to click into each item and type a number. Brad said, “You would literally just sit there going through screens one at a time. That’s all they did all week – build purchase orders.” Every SKU. Every week. Thousands of them.
With 9 to 11 buyers on staff, PO creation filled the entire week. Once orders were built, a different group confirmed them, and the warehouse tracked them. No one had time for analysis, strategy, or planning. The strain showed up everywhere. Service level hovered around 97.2%, which didn’t sound terrible, until it cost Southwest Traders a contract with a large fast casual restaurant after repeated stockouts of core products.
Inventory was another issue. Days on hand (DOH) regularly sat in the high 20s and sometimes even higher during busy seasons. Aged inventory hit 16%, tying up cash and taking up space. Whole trailers were rented just to store slow movers.
And then came Panera Bread. To support the new business, Southwest Traders needed to onboard 78 new suppliers. Leadership budgeted one additional buyer. Brad knew immediately that the math didn’t work. The old process was exhausting the team, and growth would only magnify the problem.
Discovering Blue Ridge at Exactly the Right Moment
Blue Ridge wasn’t on Brad’s radar at first. He explored other solutions, some that looked promising, but nothing felt right. Either the functionality wasn’t strong enough or the vendors didn’t have meaningful customer bases. Then a new executive joined the company, someone who had used Blue Ridge previously. He encouraged Brad to take a look at Blue Ridge.
Once the conversations began, the turning point came quickly. Blue Ridge sent a Lifeline team member who was a former procurement manager to speak with Brad and show him the capabilities of Blue Ridge’s platform. This Lifeline team member had done Brad’s job. He knew the problems intimately and could demonstrate exactly how the software addressed them.
“I wasn’t talking to someone guessing about my problems. He had lived them. And he showed me how the tool handled the situations I dealt with every day.” I could say, ‘Here’s what happens to me,’ and he’d say, ‘Use this for that.’ He knew exactly how to solve the problems I was dealing with.” That made the decision clear and was the turning point for Brad.
Rebuilding Procurement from the Inside Out
Overview
- Company: Southwest Traders
- Vertical: Food
- ERP: Mark Information Systems (AS/400)
- Blue Ridge Modules: Demand Planning, Replenishment
Challenges
- Manual, line-by-line PO entry
- No forecasting or visibility
- Service at ~97% and rising inventory levels
- 78 New suppliers, no added capacity
Solution
- Blue Ridge forecasting & replenishment
- Exception-based buying
- Cleanup of item profiles and vendor policies
Results
- Service level to 99.95%
- Days on hand cut to ~18.5
- Aged inventory down to 2%
- Team reduced to 4 buyers
Implementation wasn’t magic. Southwest Traders’ team thought they had done a thorough job preparing their data. Once they connected systems, they found mismatches between what the ERP showed and what Blue Ridge was seeing. Cleaning up item profiles, vendors, order cycles, and history took time.
To make the transition stick, Brad followed advice from his CIO: don’t do this alone. Brad recruited a Blue Ridge power user to join the team full-time. The entire group, buyers, the new super user, and the assigned Blue Ridge Lifeline rep, worked side-by-side in a large conference room until everything was stable. It wasn’t just data cleanup. It was a cultural reset, one that would shape the team’s work for years to come.
As the process matured, the team discovered they could do more with fewer resources, and redirect their time toward the strategic work that had previously been out of reach.
Before Blue Ridge:
- Buyers spent the entire week building orders
- A single vendor PO could take hours
- No one had time for proactive work
”You would literally just sit there going through screens one at a time. That's all they did all week – build purchase orders.
Brad SmithSVP of Procurement & Sales at Southwest Traders
After:
- Monday morning became “buying day”
- Buyers cleared exceptions, checked due-for-service, and were often done by noon
- For many vendors, orders could be approved without touching a single line
“Every Monday, we clear our demand exceptions and check due-for-service,” Brad says. “They’re done buying in three or four hours. Some of them are done in two. That used to take all week.” With replenishment largely automated, buyers suddenly had room to take on higher-value work, category management, sourcing, pricing, and tracking their own inbound loads. Work that previously required separate departments.
And while the team eventually shrank by roughly half, the company nearly doubled in size.
The Numbers Tell the Story: Lower DOH, Higher Service, Less Waste
The impact of Blue Ridge didn’t stop in procurement.
Warehouse teams noticed the change first. Instead of unpredictable inbound loads and pallets of slow movers clogging aisles, inventory became steady and predictable. Storage trailers were no longer needed. Spoilage dropped dramatically and labor could be deployed where it mattered.
Finance saw improvements, too. Days on hand (DOH) fell from the high 20s to about 18.5, eliminating the need to use the credit line to fund excess inventory. Aged inventory fell from 16% to 2%, one of the lowest percentages Brad had ever seen.
For customers, the difference is simple: the product is there when they need it. Service levels rose from 97.2% to 99.95%, which fundamentally changed customer conversations. That consistency didn’t just keep existing customers happy, it helped Southwest Traders win new ones. References from Panera Bread, Starbucks, Einstein, and others helped Southwest Traders win Panda Express without adding buying headcount.
”They’re done buying in three or four hours. Some of them are done in two. That used to take all week
Brad SmithSVP of Procurement & Sales at Southwest Traders
“We’re launching Panda Express right now and I’m not adding a buyer,” Brad says. “Our service level with Panera, Einstein, Starbucks, all those brands, is 99.95%. They talk to each other. That’s how we got Panda.”
For the buyers themselves, the job changed shape. With Blue Ridge handling replenishment math, they had time to take on work that used to sit in someone else’s department:
- Running RFPs for categories like cups or packaging
- Sourcing better pricing and terms
- Tracking their own POs and inbound shipments instead of handing them off
- Supporting sales without getting buried in follow-up and manual checks
They stopped being “people who place orders” and became true category managers.
Seven Years Later, Still Central to the Operation
Southwest Traders has now been on Blue Ridge since 2018. The metrics have held and, in many areas, improved as more data accumulated and buyers learned how to get the most from the system. Blue Ridge is a core part of their supply chain operation. Their LifeLine coach brings proactive recommendations rather than reactive troubleshooting, something Brad appreciates.
The company plans to move to Blue Ridge’s powerful new Xpression platform. Brad expects more automation in the years ahead, especially auto-approved orders for consistent, predictable items, and sees Blue Ridge as essential to that path.
“If we ever changed ERP systems, I’d fight hard to keep Blue Ridge. The ERP handles transactions. Blue Ridge handles the intelligence. That’s the difference.”
Southwest Traders didn’t just replace a system. They replaced a way of working. The move from manual PO creation to an exception-driven planning process changed the role of buyers, stabilized inventory, eliminated warehouse congestion, and brought service levels to a point where customers now recommend them to others.
What began as a way to keep up with growth became a foundation for supporting even more of it.
