Qmerit
Optimized, Simplified Procurement

How much time and money could you save maintaining your commercial facility if you were able to procure both labor and materials from one platform?

According to Qmerit, building owners spend an average of $1.45 per square foot annually on parts, materials and equipment for maintenance, repair and operations (MRO). Despite the cost, most owners have limited resources to strategically negotiate supplier agreements, let alone ensure that employees use them. As a result, maintenance technicians buy their parts and equipment from a wide array of suppliers at an unnecessary high cost.

The problem only compounds itself when they outsource projects to third-party contractors, typically because (1) owners or property managers lack visibility into the availability and performance of qualified contractors, and (2) contractors often purchase parts and materials at an even higher cost basis than the customer hiring them.

Qmerit, a supply chain solutions company, solves these supply chain and procurement inefficiencies with their cloud-based, Building Trades Marketplace. Their platform brings visibility to the sourcing of qualified internal and contingent labor while simultaneously offering a consumer-like procurement experience that showcases discounts from aggregated spend and federated search capabilities.

To improve contractor selection, the marketplace platform perpetually scores a building owner’s contractors based on a multitude of attributes including past performance, service quality, compliance and responsiveness. Termed the QCI score, this allows companies to objectively select the optimal contractor for each job while considering labor rates, skills and more to lower labor costs.

To lower material and equipment costs, Qmerit continues to aggregate the MRO spend of building owners, property managers and contractors to secure discounts that are far deeper than those clients could secure on their own. As Qmerit continues to grow its client base, their team is constantly adding strategic suppliers and renegotiating discounts based on increased aggregated spend.

Qmerit is one of the most disruptive innovations to be deployed in the building trades supply chain

To reduce costs even further, Qmerit allows building owners to extend these supplier discounts to all their contractors. Contractors essentially become part of the client’s network (at no additional cost to the client or contractor) and can make direct purchases with the Qmerit suppliers. Building owners’ employees and contractors can receive these discounts whether they purchase supplies on Qmerit’s eProcurement platform, at a branch, over the phone, or on the supplier’s website.

Schneider Electric’s recent capital investment in Qmerit is a testimony to their ability to bring together strategic sourcing, procurement management, and workforce management. The company’s client base includes BMW, ChargePoint and EMCOR, and the company has recently been awarded a contract from the California Energy Commission that will establish an Energy Efficiency Marketplace that provides workforce procurement and centralized purchasing for energy efficiency projects throughout California. Building and home owners can go to a central website to purchase energy efficiency and water saving products at discounted prices, and find pre-qualified contractors to perform the installation. Qmerit is negotiating with suppliers and manufacturers to obtain the lowest prices possible for the energy efficiency products and perpetually scoring the performance of contractors being used for the installations.

Thorough these innovative supply chains solutions, Qmerit is transforming and optimizing the way labor and materials are procured for building owners, property managers and contractors. As William Murdy, Former Chairman/CEO Comfort Systems recently stated, “Qmerit is one of the most disruptive innovations to be deployed in the building trades supply chain.”