This January marks Avendra’s 15th year of providing best-in-class procurement services to more than 7,000 customers in the hospitality industry.  Recently Wolfram Schaefer, Avendra’s President and CEO, answered some key questions in Hotel Business magazine about its growth, success and strategies moving forward.

“As we approach this milestone, I want to send out my sincerest gratitude to our customers who trust us with their business every day, to our suppliers who are exceptional partners to us and to the Avendra associates who are always thinking about how to make the business better for our customers and suppliers. Thank you all.” – Wolfram Schaefer

Q: To what do you owe the success of Avendra and its growth through the past 15 years?

A:  We attribute our growth to three key strengths—the ability to leverage $4 billion in spend from and for our customer base, our customer-centric culture and our associates, who are experts in their respective roles.

Leveraging the spend means that we can get very competitive pricing that we pass on to our customers.  But, there is much more work to be done after the supplier contracts are signed.  We need to make sure that we connect customers to the right suppliers and the right products and services to realize the savings they seek.  Avendra is a very consultative organization and, as such, we invest significant resources into all aspects of customer support.

For example, we have built relationships with thousands of decision-makers at our customers’ properties; we help uncover opportunities that are right for their businesses, and then we help them to make the right choices for their properties. This approach is a real differentiator for Avendra.  A competitive contract is crucial.  The ability to connect the contract value to the customer’s business is critical to long-term success.

Additionally, Avendra provides value for both stakeholders in the supply chain—for our customers and our suppliers alike.  For our customers, it’s about savings, it’s about supply chain assurance to ensure an effective supply chain, it’s about the customer support to quickly rectify if things don’t go well and also about innovation to bring new ideas.  For our supplier partners, we create a situation where they can sell and operate more efficiently, thus growing their own businesses in a profitable way.

Lastly, our associates have years of experience in the hospitality industry.  With this broad expertise, they have built Avendra into the largest professional supply chain and procurement services company serving the hospitality industry in North America.