Initial Situation
For a medium-sized company, this or a similar scenario should be well known: employees from different departments order special or customized products that cannot be found in catalog ranges. This triggers time-consuming processes for colleagues in purchasing or in the specialist departments. Purchasing must clarify in advance whether there are any offers for these products and from which supplier you can request the items. Furthermore, it must be confirmed whether the colleague is allowed to order this article due to his authorizations and position.
This process takes time on both the company and the supplier side, which is associated with higher costs and robs capacities for more important tasks. In addition, orders for special purchases or just-in-time one-off requirements are difficult to implement in an automated process.
BOOSTRACK will be happy to do this work for you!
Analysis by BOOSTRACK
We were able to support one of our customers, a global automotive supplier from southern Germany, with exactly this challenge. Because the combination of the core competencies of interior, electrics, electronics and e-mobility makes our customer unique in the entire industry and thus ad hoc orders and special procurements without delays or failures are the focus.
In the project discussions with the purchasing department, we were told about an immense number of labor-intensive requirements. Unfortunately, the attempt to process parts of the procurement via marketplaces did not deliver a satisfactory result. A not insignificant percentage of the processes could not be mapped. Approx. 20-30% remained in the conventional BANF process - unfortunately these were the most time-consuming procurement processes that required research, article and even supplier creation. In addition, there was a desire to process these processes in the standardized order system via an OCI shop.
Implementation
When we started in 2006, we connected our web shop based on the Onventis procurement solution via OCI to what was then the HealyHudson platform, today directly to SAP. An agreement was reached with the users in the plant that future requirements would no longer be addressed to the internal purchasing department, but directly to the supplier (Lingemann). We research and catalog customer-specific products, special or one-time purchases and product substitutes and make them available to the customer as a temporary inquiry catalog in the web shop. This is updated hourly. We also send a PDF to the purchasing department for random testing, which guarantees a traceable and verifiable process.
In order to also ensure the availability of the fast-moving products, we set up a depot with our own service provider - Personal (Lingemann). There, the stored goods are bundled using the processes described above and delivered to the destination in one shipment. And that within a defined time frame and according to the customer's packaging specifications.
Operation and ongoing optimization
It took only 8 months from the initial product range and price check to project implementation at all of our customer's locations. After the successful establishment of the project in Germany, further locations of our customer in Romania were integrated in 2010.
In order to ensure transparent communication about the orders and billing, the picking in the depot was carried out for the customer according to cost centers and users. Included were monthly reports according to plants and product groups as well as detailed savings reports, later even across countries.
In the future, we have planned with our customer to develop a central solution for the procurement of standard items in Europe, so that every user can purchase the defined standard item directly without further inquiries.
Measurable success
With the measures taken, our customer was able to reduce around 680 suppliers and significantly reduce the number of daily ramp contacts per plant. It was possible to bundle the contact persons of the various manufacturers, since this communication is now channeled through our partner Lingemann.
Our customer was thus able to gain comprehensive control over the entire ordering process and automated his work processes with us. We have adapted the range exactly to customer requirements and changes can be traced in the shop at any time.