Stop shopping every order from scratch. That's my advice, and it usually makes procurement consultants wince. I'm an office administrator for a 148-person engineering and design firm. I handle purchasing across three offices—roughly $370,000 a year in supplies, equipment, printing, and the miscellaneous stuff that never makes it into a neat report. I've been doing this since 2020. If you're still running the old best-practice playbook, I think it's time to update it.
What was best practice in 2020 doesn't necessarily apply in 2025. The fundamentals haven't changed: get the right item, at the right price, to the right place. But the execution has transformed. You know what changed? The supplier relationship. It used to be about order-by-order bidding. Now it's about consistency, data, and catching problems before they become expensive.
The old way was creating invoices, not value
When I took over purchasing in 2020, I followed the conventional wisdom: get three quotes, compare line items, keep a master spreadsheet. That lasted six months. The spreadsheet was fine. The invoices weren't. We had a vendor that couldn't issue a proper invoice—finance rejected a $2,400 charge because the descriptions didn't match our cost codes. I ate it out of the department budget. That was the moment I stopped negotiating every single order.
Everything I'd read about procurement said always shop around. My experience with 200+ orders says something different: relationship consistency usually beats marginal savings. If your supplier knows your approval chain, your locations, and your tax-exempt status, the order takes ten minutes. Shopping around each time takes half a day, and one mistake eats any savings.
I'm not saying you should never compare prices. I'm saying start with a platform that gives you item-level history, then compare from there. That's where Staples Business Advantage—formerly Staples Advantage—comes in.
What "Staples Business Advantage" means when you're actually buying
Staples Advantage used to feel like a separate catalog you'd get from a sales rep. Now it's the B2B side of Staples under the Staples Business Advantage name. For us, it means one thing: a controlled catalog with assigned account numbers, spending limits, and item histories. It means an order can be approved, fulfilled, and reconciled with less back-and-forth.
Does that sound boring? It should. The whole point is to make procurement boring. I don't want a vendor relationship to be a daily adventure. I want a routine that surfaces exceptions when there's a problem.
Janitorial supplies are surprisingly strategic
One of the categories that made me a believer was janitorial supplies. Nobody gets excited about paper towels, trash bags, and air fresheners. But they need to show up every month, or facilities starts getting complaints, and the facilities manager starts finding out who to blame.
We used to buy cleaning supplies from a local supplier and office supplies from another. Then in our 2024 vendor consolidation project, I put Staples Business Advantage janitorial supplies into one standing monthly order. It sounds small. It wasn't. Processing 60-80 orders a year across eight vendors meant reconciling eight different invoices. Now the cleaning supplies, printer paper, and break-room coffee are on one statement. The accounting team got back about six hours a month. Six hours. That's not overhead, that's capacity.
Also, if you're going to tout "eco-friendly" janitorial supplies, be careful. Per FTC Green Guides, a claim like "recyclable" needs to be substantiated—not all products are recyclable in every market. Using a supplier catalog with standardized specs is safer than taking a package claim at face value.
The phone number question, or why customer service still matters
I know a lot of people search for "Staples Advantage telephone number" because they're stuck on a login issue. I've been there. The online chat can solve routine things, but when an order is stuck in approval due to an old user permission, a human is faster.
I keep the Staples Advantage telephone number saved as "BUSINESS ACCT" in my phone. Yes, an admin buyer in 2025 still uses a phone. Not for everything, but when something gets rejected and the online queue says "longer than usual," a call saves days. At least, that's been my experience with business accounts.
Three odd questions I actually answer
What is a printer?
A printer is an output device that puts text or graphics from a digital file onto physical media. That's the textbook answer. But when somebody sends me the question "what is a printer", they're usually asking why our new multifunction machine scans with an odd vertical line. The real answer: modern office printers are computers with paper drawers. They need network configuration, driver updates, and a service plan unless you want your vendor on speed dial.
The best "what is a printer" answer for an admin is often not a definition at all. It's a spec sheet. For commercial print jobs, I follow the standard 300 DPI at final size. A 72 DPI screen grab may look okay in email, but it will not print like a usable document. That's why I order printing through a service rather than letting someone blindly hit print.
Corkboard, but not the corkboard you think
If you've ever compared corkboard listings, you know the category is less simple than it looks. There's traditional cork, self-healing cork that doesn't turn into a pincushion, and fabric-wrapped board that looks better in a conference room. Most teams just need something that holds pins and doesn't sag. For a heavy-use pin board, real cork wins. For a wall in a glass office, choose the look first and accept some functional trade-off.
What I learned the hard way: don't buy a corkboard based on thickness alone. Mounting hardware is usually the actual issue. Measure the stud spacing before you order anything. Otherwise the board arrives, the included anchors are too small for your wall, and the maintenance guy gives you a look you won't forget.
What does a roof pitch calculator have to do with an office supply order?
This one is not an office supply item. I'm not a roofer, and I'm not going to pretend to explain how to use a roof pitch calculator. I'd tell you to consult someone whose livelihood depends on being on a roof. But the fact that the phrase shows up in our procurement search log tells me something: people use search engines as question-answering machines, even on purchasing portals. They're not really looking for roofing advice from Staples. They're looking for a tool, a guide, or a person who can point them in the right direction.
In that same search session, they'll order a corkboard, a roll of packing tape, a print cartridge, and a printer. The point is that procurement is now blended into every kind of task. If you're a facilities manager measuring a roof, you probably don't want to think about purchase orders at all. That's why having a single supplier with visibility into past orders matters. You don't want to search through five sites. You want the answer in one place.
What I'd tell a new admin buyer
Put your ego aside. "Got a better price" is not a win if it costs your finance team hours in invoice matching. Work with a smaller set of vendors and use purchase history to spot when prices drift. If you have a business account, don't let it sit idle. Set up approval rules, assign buying permissions, and use the data.
When you hit a wall, call the Staples Advantage telephone number. There is no bonus for being stubborn.
So bottom line: the industry has evolved. The "Staples Advantage" of five years ago is now part of a larger business procurement machine. It's not about the label—it's about whether the system can handle janitorial supplies, printer paper, a corkboard, and, yes, an occasional search for a roof pitch calculator, without making you chase a human. The fundamentals are still the fundamentals. But in 2025, execution is the competitive advantage.
Would I go back to eight vendors and a master spreadsheet? Not a chance. That's why I think the business account approach is right—not because it's flashy, but because it makes the next order easier than the last. Not every order is exciting. That's exactly the point.
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