GS Associates: Securing Connections
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Written by Eric Slack   
Monday, 01 June 2009
GS Associates: Securing Connections
Long-term relationships, industry expertise, and a proprietary software system are the reasons behind this global procurement services company's success.




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Providing procurement services for hospitality clients sounds like an easy process. Source the goods for a client, and get them installed. According to Gus Sarff, president of Massachusetts-based GS Associates, the reality isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds.

“We’ve seen industry shakeups and buyouts, and it shows you how establishing a trusting relationship between project managers and clients is critical to sustaining a company,” he said.

Prior to starting GS Associates, Sarff cut his teeth in the hotel industry, beginning in 1983 as a project financial controller for Sheraton for new build hotels. With extensive experience hiring interior designers and procurement agents and in project management, Sarff developed some of Sheraton’s corporate requirements for engaging procurement and defined what the company considered to be a qualified purchasing company.

GS Associates: Securing Connections
Gus Sarff, president
He then worked for the owners of the Grand Hyatt in Singapore and subsequently with an interior design firm in Boston before starting a procurement company with two partners that did international work in Japan, Korea, and Singapore. In 1994, he went out on his own and founded GS Associates. His time in project management served his new company well, as he had already built a reputation for getting the job done with the many contacts he had already made.

“Our service is only relevant when an owner is thinking about the interior, and a mistake the people used to make was getting the procurement agent involved once the design was done,” Sarff said. “Now sophisticated clients know the project team needs to include the procurement agent, and we’re often brought on board before the interior designer because we help with programming and realistic budgeting.”

That stable of contacts and industry understanding continues to factor into the company’s growth plans because GS Associates spends more resources on making sure its project teams are equipped to do the job than it does on advertising. Sarff is now a member of the International Society of Hospitality Consultants, an association that allows him more opportunities to connect with industry experts and decisionmakers.

GS Associates approaches procurement from the perspective of project management. Primarily, the company tries to get involved with projects during the programming stage and establish a schedule for important steps like receiving documentation from a designer and having budgets established and approved. The company also works to establish client objectives.

“These days there are some unrealistic expectations about budgets and schedules. We’ve seen a dramatic change because where there once was a manufacturing base in the US and the West, it now has moved to China and the East,” said Sarff. “There are longer lead times for getting materials made and shipped, so we go in and define that process so the owner and the rest of the project team know what it takes for us to implement our scope of work.”

Creating solutions
The company developed proprietary Web-based software called Apex Pro, so when it gets design specs, they are speed scanned into its system and manufacturers from around the world can provide bids on the project. Although the site is open for anyone to view, GS Associates controls the owner’s data in a secure network, identifies the vendors involved, and invites them to review documentation from designers and enter bids into the system. Bids are then automatically added up, assessed, packaged together, and brought to the client in the form of a sophisticated qualitative and quantitative analysis of each bid and total cost.

The system allows GS Associates to react quickly once information is entered. What used to take three to four weeks to produce now takes less than a day. This makes it easier to streamline the process from taking in orders to the implementation of a project.

The software also acts as an integrating force, making the entire project team a part of the process. Client designers and project managers can access the site to review project status. Designers can review shop drawings and take part in the approval process, creating a paper trail. Project managers can take a look at constant real-time budget status because when a purchase order comes in, costs are matched against the project budget immediately.

“We are now working at engaging vendors to provide accurate expediting information updated by logging in to our system or by integrating with their systems. We’ve held back on that a bit because of our concern for accuracy from those vendors because we prefer to extract that information from them and put our own notes in the system,” Sarff said. “But we are finding more companies these days that use barcodes and offer shipping that creates an accuracy about order status, so we can get 60% to 70% accuracy now, and we are looking to update that.”

The system also helps GS Associates take a hands-on approach to the installation process by engaging qualified installation contractors that are tied to its system. The company can pull information out of its system to create load and install schedules and the company’s project managers will go out and conduct kickoff meetings and installation trips no matter where the project is.

With a reputation bolstered by working on higher-end projects, GS Associates has been able to expand into other areas of hospitality as the industry trended more and more toward using procurement agents. Adjusting to changing demands is now a critical part of the company’s ability to continue serving clients in all parts of the market.

“Up until the economic crash there was an incessant hunger for luxury, with three-star properties becoming four-star, four-star to five, and five-star pushing the envelope further,” Sarff said. “Now we are seeing a concept of responsible luxury, and we are starting to see sustainability take hold and be more than just talk.”

By building and maintaining a quality staff, most of which has been with Sarff for more than 10 years, a lack of turnover has helped the company ensure that none of its clients deal with inexperienced people. With an organizational philosophy committed to constant improvement, Sarff is confident that GS Associates is on the right path to come out of the economic slump ahead of the game.

“Our clients want their projects done on time with the proper quality, with everything moving as smooth as can be and at the lowest cost,” he said. “Relationships are key to this business, and we just need to keep bringing in new prospective clients and do a great job for all of them.”
 
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