How to streamline suppliers, reduce admin and give your teams more time back in their day.
If there’s one thing early childhood education and care (ECEC) leaders wish they had more of, it’s time. And until we crack the code for time travel, finding efficiencies in our day-to-day processes is the next best thing.
For ECEC professionals, having efficient systems is crucial to a well-run service. This allows staff to focus more on what matters – working their magic with children and families, and driving real opportunities for learning and growth.
We’ve identified five ways for ECEC providers to maximise efficiency across their service. Centre directors, procurement teams, finance and accounts payable divisions – this one is for you.
1. Save time with online purchasing
Purchasing groceries and other everyday items online allows busy services to find exactly what they need faster, limiting time spent physically traipsing the aisles in a supermarket. Dietary and lifestyle filters also make it faster and easier to find suitable items based on the needs of individual children.
Allergies have emerged as a major public health problem in recent years. Given the number of dietary and lifestyle preferences you may be juggling, partnering with a supplier who makes it easy to accommodate these needs is a huge time saver for ECEC teams. These filters, along with Health Star Rating and allergen information, are built into the ordering experience with Woolworths at Work.
We also provide the ability to create custom shopping lists and access previous orders to make things even easier. You’ll never be left trying to remember which brand of ice blocks you ordered for Christmas last year, or how many paper napkins were purchased for graduation. You can easily order the items from your saved lists, or find a previous order and replicate it in just a few clicks.
Woolworths at Work also has a range of delivery options to work around the unique timing of a busy ECEC day. Whether it’s free next day delivery, an early Monday morning slot to get you set up for the week or same day delivery to get your essentials in a hurry, partnering with Woolworths at Work means you’ll be able to get what you need, when you need on your schedule.
2. Supply management, simplified
Vendors, contracts, deliveries, invoices… with each purchase made to keep an ECEC service running smoothly comes administrative burden. The more suppliers, the greater the challenge.
Once ECEC providers start to scale up and open new services around the country, the headaches only get larger, and opportunities for costs to creep up unnoticed grow.
Switching to a mode which streamlines suppliers makes financial sense and maximises cost efficiencies. This helps budgets go further through a reduction in administration time and an improvement in spend visibility.
3. Smart accounting solutions, tailored to ECEC
Imagine condensing thousands of transactions into one monthly invoice for all services across an ECEC network. Adopting this approach saw OSHC provider Big Childcare reduce the administration time of its accounts payable team by 50 per cent when 170 food and consumable invoices were consolidated into one network-wide invoice delivered through Woolworths at Work, without risking visibility.
Big Childcare was able to retain a real-time view on spend visibility via Work Hub – a central point of control for business admins. The reporting dashboard allows businesses to monitor monthly spend per location, track purchasing trends and identify areas for cost savings. Having access to this data allowed Big Childcare to reduce spend leakage and make informed decisions quickly.
Adopting this approach also greatly minimised the number of expense claims coming from services. This helped Big Childcare keep its staff happy at a time when employee attraction, retention and promotion is a big pressure point for the sector.
4. Stretch your budget further
We understand the enormous demands leaders face when it comes to delivering a high quality early learning experience for children and families, while maintaining a business which meets the expectations of all stakeholders.
Free delivery options mean that services can have their fresh food and everyday essentials delivered at no extra cost, right to their door, saving fuel and employee time visiting stores.
“Having so many delivery windows has been key for us. The delivery windows are much shorter and capacity hasn’t been a problem. We can get same day and next day deliveries depending on our business needs,” existing customer Erica Mihalkis, Operations Manager, Big Childcare explained.
A wide range of products at a variety of price points mean that staple goods are always available. We offer a range of Own Brand, mid-tier and premium brands to suit all taste buds and budgets. We also make it easy to spot the most cost-effective products across our range. When you order online, you’ll see value tags including ‘Large value pack’ and ‘Top picks’ which identify popular, high value-for-money items in your industry.
And for those times when a little flexibility is needed, Woolworths at Work can extend the cash flow capacity of services with a Work Account line of credit. This offers businesses 30 days to accrue spend, followed by 15 days to pay a single invoice. This consolidates spend across the entire businesses, whether you have one site or 100. Businesses can customise their billing cycle to suit their needs and drastically reduce the amount of admin required to manage orders across the organisation.
5. Help is never far away
Making the choice to partner with Woolworths at Work unlocks access to a dedicated partner who understands the needs of the ECEC sector inside and out, so that teams spend less time problem solving and more time caring for children and supporting families.
From invoice queries to order inquiries, bulk order requests to order updates and everything in between, our team is committed to saving ECEC services administration time, and to delivering long term value, while nurturing relationships with business partners of all kinds.
“We had an amazing onboarding experience, it was very smooth and I did not find the need to be constantly involved. Our dedicated Account Manager proactively reaches out to us to see how things are going and how Woolworths at Work can help our business,” Ellen Porter, State Operations Manager, Mayfield Childcare shared.
To learn more about how Woolworths at Work can support your team, sign up today or submit an expression of interest and someone from our team will be in touch.
