Experience > Success Stories > D.R. Horton

Customer Case Study | Home Building

About D.R. Horton

Founded in 1978, D.R. Horton (America's Builder) currently operates in 77 markets in 26 states. The company is the largest home builder in the country based on annual revenue ($11 billion) and builds nearly 40,000 residential homes per year.

Challenge

The company was looking for creative ways to shorten the time to market for new projects, reduce the cost of bid document distribution, improve vendor relationships, and make the estimating and purchasing staff more efficient. Instead of contributing to strategic activities, estimators were spending too much time pre-qualifying vendors, managing the distribution of bid documents and addenda, and manually comparing contractor bids.

Solution

D.R. Horton implemented a vendor portal solution from eBid Systems that manages the procurement lifecycle, including online vendor pre-qualification, bid invitation, electronic bid document distribution, online bidding and bid analysis. Bid form spreadsheets that contain over 3,000 items are uploaded into eBid eXchange by the Estimating staff. Vendors are invited to bid on specific items and submit their bids online. After all bids are received, the Estimating staff can view submitted bids that are automatically tabulated and statistically compared, saving many hours of analysis.

Key Benefits

• Established a 24/7 portal for self-service vendor registration
• Eliminated hard copy bid document distribution and pre-bid meetings with contractors
• Improved targeting of bid opportunities to specific vendors
• Estimated direct savings of $70,000 to $100,000