Based in Alabama and managing properties across three states, Auburn Hospitality is a multi-brand hotel group operating 14 properties under Holiday Day Inn, La Quinta, Hampton Inn, Element, Fairfield Inn & Suites and Sonesta flags.
The Challenge
Auburn Hospitality manages 14 properties across three states, with procurement consolidated at the company’s Opelika, Alabama headquarters and led by Procurement Manager, Beth Criswell. As the portfolio grew, the buying function ran up against the limits of vendor-by-vendor ordering.
Every major supplier lived in its own portal. Price comparison meant flipping between vendor sites — Guest Supply on one screen, HD Supply on another, US Foods and Sysco in separate tabs. Monthly orders that should have taken hours stretched across multiple days. GPO and negotiated pricing had to be tracked manually. And without cross-vendor visibility, there was no way to know what the team was leaving on the table on any given order.
The pain points were operational. The impact was financial:
- Vendor-by-vendor ordering consumed two to three days every monthly cycle
- No cross-vendor price comparison meant unrealized savings on every order
- GPO and negotiated pricing weren’t consistently applied at the point of purchase
- Order records lived in disconnected systems across 14 properties
“I had multiple screens on my desk. Guest Supply on this screen, HD Supply on this screen – just having to price check and all that. To me, it’s the biggest time saver.”
– Beth Criswell, Procurement Manager, Auburn Hospitality
Auburn needed a procurement system built for the way hotel groups actually buy — connected to the vendors they already used, surfacing pricing they were already entitled to, and centralizing ordering across every property and the corporate office.
The Partnership
In 2025, Auburn Hospitality implemented Inn-Flow Procurement (formerly Lilo) across all 14 properties and the Opelika corporate office. The platform connected directly to Auburn’s major hospitality suppliers — US Foods, Sysco, HD Supply, Guest Supply — pulling catalogs and contracted pricing into a single ordering interface.
With Inn-Flow Procurement, Auburn was able to:
- Order from every connected vendor in one place, with one cart
- Pull GPO and negotiated pricing automatically into every order
- Compare prices across suppliers before placing an order
- Consolidate invoices and order history into a single, searchable record
- Roll the same workflow out across all 14 properties without retraining
“Especially the bigger vendors — US Foods, Sysco, HD, Guest Supply. They’re all connected. It pulls over your catalog and even your pricing — so if you’re under a GPO, all that pricing comes over with it.”
– Beth Criswell, Procurement Manager, Auburn Hospitality
The platform was designed to match the way buyers already shop. Adoption across the team was immediate.
“It’s very easy, user-friendly. If you shop on Amazon, then you can use [Inn-Flow Procurement]. That’s how I put it.”
– Beth Criswell, Procurement Manager, Auburn Hospitality
The Impact
Within the first year, Auburn Hospitality transformed how procurement runs across the portfolio.
Two numbers tell the story: monthly ordering cycles shrank from up to three days to one. Breakfast orders that used to consume every Monday now wrap by noon. The multi-screen price-checking workflow is gone — Auburn’s team places orders, compares pricing, and tracks invoices from a single workspace.
“Monthly orders would normally take me one or two, sometimes three days. I can knock ’em all out in a day. Same thing with breakfast orders — used to be an all-day process on Monday. Now I’m done by 12, 1 o’clock.”
– Beth Criswell, Procurement Manager, Auburn Hospitality
The financial impact extended beyond time savings. Cross-vendor comparison surfaced margin that Auburn had been leaving with suppliers — order-level savings that were invisible under the old workflow.
“I realized I could save a couple hundred dollars with each order that I wasn’t saving, because I hadn’t compared it. Now I’m doing that on every order.”
– Beth Criswell, Procurement Manager, Auburn Hospitality
For Auburn, Inn-Flow Procurement replaced a fragmented, multi-vendor process with a single source of truth — orders, invoices, pricing, and contract terms all in one place. The team gained back days of capacity each month, recovered margin on every cycle, and built a procurement foundation that scales as the portfolio grows.