Case Study: Leading Drugstore Chain achieves higher efficiency and major savings with SMART by GEP

Leading Drugstore Chain Drives Higher Efficiency and Savings with SMART by GEP

A leading U.S. drugstore chain with more than 50 years of history, roughly 85,000 employees and over 4,500 stores across 31 states faced highly decentralized, manual procurement: multiple legacy systems, paper-based invoices, poor spend visibility, low spend under management and long approval cycles (more than 30 days), which limited productivity and savings.

The company implemented SMART by GEP’s P2P and Contract Management in under eight months (with minimal customization), creating a single, cloud-native procurement platform. Results included >90% of invoices entered via the supplier portal, payment approval time cut from >30 days to <5 days, spend under management rising from under 20% to over 90%, 300+ users on one system, and measurable gains in productivity, compliance and captured early-payment discounts.