Today, e-commerce is a key part of all our lives, whether you’re aware of it or not. From shopping for clothes online, to ordering our weekly food shop, panic buying last minute presents and now for material procurement, online purchasing has helped to ease many of the everyday stresses of our lives. Where would we be without it?
But what exactly is e-commerce? In simple terms, it’s the trading of goods and services on the internet. Following the founding of the World Wide Web at the end of the 20th century, the 1990s saw the advent of both PayPal and Amazon. And since the COVID-19 pandemic, reliance on online shopping and the internet to source the things we need has skyrocketed. Today there are endless sites to meet your every purchasing need.
Yet for Nick Robbins and Mark McGregor, the founders of Matsource, there was a gap online. With experience in engineering, e-commerce, and IT, they saw and understood the struggles of material procurement in the engineering and manufacturing sectors and knew there had to be a simpler way.
Simplifying material procurement
Nick and Mark saw that there was a genuine need within the industry for a platform that would make sourcing the materials you want and selling the materials you stock – more efficient. The technology, the tools and the need were all there. It just needed someone to set it all up. And this is where Matsource was born.
Spending time emailing companies, chasing phone calls, and maybe even still faxing across quotes, wastes precious time. With no guarantee that someone will pick up the phone or that as a supplier you will get the job you quoted, time goes wasted. Nick and Mark began to imagine what it could look like if this process was streamlined into an easy to use online platform. Matsource makes the entire process simpler.
What makes Matsource different? The software is beneficial for both the supplier and the customer, allowing the customer to prioritise delivery time or price, depending on the needs of the individual order. All the supplier has to do is create an account and select the materials they want to sell. Then the customer enters their request and any certification requirements, and Matsource helps connect the two! You can see quotes and responses from your contacts in real time on your account. Matsource saves time for your team to spend on more valuable tasks for your business!
The future of material procurement
With the engineering and manufacturing industry constantly innovating, it’s now time that material procurement did the same. There is no need for it to fall behind as the rest of the industry develops and modernizes.
That’s where Matsource comes in. It makes material procurement easier than ever before – both for supplier and customer.
Matsource is the present and the future for materials e-commerce. It transcends geographical boundaries to give customers a wider purchasing net. It extends a supplier’s sales network, without increasing headcount or cost. It really is a modern day win-win that will enable engineering and manufacturing businesses to free up time from procurement administration, and instead focus on driving forward business performance.
Do more, with less
So, at a time when businesses need to do more with less, use the resources and people you have to develop operations and improve profitability, by spending less time on material procurement.
And with no hidden costs (the platform is free to use), trying out Matsource is low risk – hear from some of the engineering and manufacturing companies that are already reaping the platform benefits.
Or if you’d like to talk to Nick and Mark about the genuine drivers behind why they set up Matsource (and more importantly, why it’s vendor agnostic and completely independent), get in touch with them today on LinkedIn or through the website.
