At Fidelity Investments, Bill Landers, director of Relocation and Inventory Management, deals with many vendors. But only a few are considered true partners. “The companies we call partners are those who look out for our best interests rather than their own. They provide information and alternatives that help us solve our issues.”

One of the companies Landers considers a partner is Creative Office Pavilion (COP), the Herman Miller Certified Dealer Network member located in Boston.

As building leases expire, as capital companies are bought or sold, and as staff is reorganized to better service customers, Fidelity experiences substantial churn. Seeking ways to avoid costs, Fidelity decided to outsource the management of its furniture to COP.

COP utilizes the Herman Miller Asset and Inventory Management (AIM) program to manage Fidelity’s inventories and record transactions. Those transactions involve workplace changes for more than 36,000 employees located in over a dozen buildings in Boston, in addition to the regional offices and capital companies around the country. As a result, by reusing existing furnishings, Fidelity is realizing a significant annual cost avoidance.

According to Joe Doran, site manager at COP, Fidelity initiates as many as 15 to 20 “reservations” per day. A reservation, which reserves inventory for a specific office project, may be for a single chair or may include all the items needed to reconfigure 100 workstations. COP and Fidelity use reports produced by the AIM program to help evaluate the condition and status of assets to maximize their use and/or make decisions about their disposition.

COP initially dedicated nearly 40,000 square feet of rack space for Fidelity’s inventory of desks, chairs, bookcases, casegoods, and systems furniture. COP also works with Fidelity’s Haworth dealers to consolidate inventory and reorder more products as needed.

Fidelity realizes savings on warehouse space due to reductions in square footage through more efficient storage techniques and time savings through COP’s use of the Asset and Inventory Management program.

As a member of the Certified Network, COP can ensure Fidelity consistent services throughout all its locations. In fact, the furnishings from a facility in Dallas were disassembled, packaged, and shipped to Boston for less than $300 per workstation. That’s a considerable cost avoidance when compared to purchasing new workstations.

COP also refurbishes Fidelity’s furniture—from any manufacturer. It’s all accomplished at COP’s location so there’s no additional packing and delivery charges. And when any of the furnishings are determined to be underutilized or non-usable by Fidelity, they can be resold through the Certified Dealer Network connections.

COP not only provides delivery and installation of products as requested but also ensures that these products have been cleaned and are in their best possible condition before installation. And COP aims to put inventory back into the warehouse and logged into the software within 24 to 48 hours so it is available when next needed. The efficient storage of product and the use of the software to manage the assets mean that installations can be accomplished in shorter time frames. In fact, end users have consistently rated the completed projects as above average or exceeded expectations 88 to 92 percent of the time.

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