How SAM Construction Group LLC gained visibility and supported scale with Ramp Procurement

On the heels of strong performance during the COVID pandemic, SAM Construction Group LLC entered a period of hyper growth beginning in 2022. “At the end of 2022, we were 20 people,” says SAM's CFO James Hardy. “Fast forward to today, and we have 215 people.” As the company grew, James knew the finance and accounting team’s tools would need to scale accordingly—but its legacy systems couldn’t support the rapid pace. 

“We were using our corporate banking partner, but I didn’t have much control or visibility, and it was a very manual process,” says James. “It was a huge burden.” 

SAM didn’t historically have a procurement platform. When employees needed to make large purchases, they would use their corporate cards. James wanted to implement a formal procurement process that would give him the visibility he needed to control spend and set a budget. “Before, everything was done verbally or by email, which made me very uncomfortable,” he says. “There was no cycle. We were missing invoices because we didn’t know they were coming.” POs, James knew, would create a trackable trail of information on a purchased item, as well as audit trails and activity reports. “We had none of that,” laments James. “I felt blind.”

James knew he needed a procurement partner that could support the company’s high growth while providing the visibility and control he desperately needed.

James piloted Ramp Procurement with a small group of initial users, including SAM’s CEO. “He approves every single PO, no matter the dollar value,” says James. Gaining executive approval used to be a bottleneck, but Ramp has streamlined the process. “He hits approve on the PO, then he approves the payment, and on our end we can easily see that he’s approved it,” says James. That has resulted both in greater confidence and visibility over purchases and time savings, as the accounting team is no longer delayed in entering invoices, uploading CSVs, and tracking purchases in SAM’s ERP system. “It has saved so much time and stress,” says James. 

With Ramp, James and his team can create customizations for their specific vendors and purchases. “We see the workflow approval, and the processing time is night and day,” says James. Now, vendors know they need to submit a PO in order to get paid, which has implemented the additional layers of control that James had been seeking. “Now we have three project managers that are responsible for setting up the POs and buying, and on each construction site we have an equipment manager who handles the receiving and documenting and providing the confirmation that all materials have been received,” says James. A formerly chaotic situation now has a clear process and clear roles.

Whereas James felt that he was “blind” with his legacy system, he now has clear visibility and control with Ramp’s procurement product. “Ramp has been the tool that’s really helped us manage our purchases, because we can see everything now,” says James. When SAM was working solely with its banking partner, it took two months to review and reconcile credit card bills. “Everyone was just submitting Excel documents with receipts, and many people didn’t submit receipts at all,” says James. That meant the accounting team was constantly chasing employees for their expense reports, which was a significant time sink. 

“I always tell people it’s those unseen costs that really add up,” says James. “With Ramp, it now takes my team a day and a half to review and approve purchases, compared to two weeks before.” 

With Ramp, time-savings and improved visibility go hand-in-hand, particularly since the platform consolidates both AP and procurement into the same system. “The biggest advantage is you don’t have to switch between tabs or log into different accounts,” says James. Before Ramp, James and his team had to undergo a duplicative process of saving files in various places, then uploading individual invoices into the accounting system. “With Ramp, it’s just noted in our accounting system,” says James. 

It’s not just the accounting team that has saved time thanks to Ramp— users across the organization save time thanks to the platform’s ease of use. “Everyone who uses the procurement system loves the drag and drop functionality,” says James. “It’s the easiest thing in the world, and it saves everyone time. Even the CEO, who is a critic of everything, loves it.” For James, not having to answer the same question repeatedly is a win. “I used to get five people asking me if the same invoice was paid,” he says. “Now they can log into Ramp and actually see where it is in the process.”

That improved visibility has an added benefit: ensuring that SAM is paying its invoices on time. “We used to be consistently two weeks late or more on certain things that we didn’t know about,” says James. Much of that lateness was due to a lack of visibility: James and his team would receive an unexpected invoice then need to figure out the approval chain, for example. Consistently paying late was disruptive for both parties, and ultimately bad for SAM’s bottom line. 

Since implementing Ramp Procurement, though, SAM consistently makes payments on-time—which has improved the company’s relationship with its vendors and even cut costs. “More vendors are allowing for discounts now, because they’re seeing the quick payment,” says James. “That started with Ramp—getting everyone paid on time. We’ll get a 1-2% discount for paying early. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars, it does add up.”

The swift and accurate exchange of information that Ramp facilitates has resulted in greater efficiency for the organization. “I have visibility, the CEO has visibility, the team has visibility,” says James. “Now people get the information in the system, and everything flows better.” 

For James, that means fewer interruptions and more time spent on strategic initiatives—and that’s a welcome change. “Ramp is probably one of the best programs I’ve ever used in my business career,” he says. “Everyone says ‘Ramp’s awesome,’ and I say yes—it is.”