Our customer is a global leader of sustainable steel production and it is critical to the business to have full control over supplier information and risks. As an early adopter, the company had clearly defined processes, but the system support was insufficient with manual and time-consuming supplier management. The legacy solution had a complex and inflexible supplier questionnaires and implied data gathering and validation in different systems and sources.
In 2022, the customer made the strategic decision to implement Ivalua, a leading solution for Supplier & Spend Management. This initiative included the adoption of Ivalua’s advanced features for Supplier and Risk Management, alongside seamless integration with 3rd party supplier data sources. Additionally, the legacy Sourcing and Contract Management system was upgraded to Ivalua’s more user-friendly and modern capabilities.
Stretch Procurement was the chosen partner for the Ivalua implementation and we were excited to be part of the journey, knowing that it would require a significate uplift when shifting from a manual to a highly automated way of handling supplier data. Throughout the project and beyond we provided advice on the business process to enable the seamless integration of the service delivery of project and the solution configuration with the integration build.
The business objectives were clear; increase quality and efficiency within supplier management. And the output of the solution implementation showed positive results instantly:
- Time spent on supplier evaluation and qualification has reduced significantly by connecting the Ivalua Supplier Management platform to the ERP as well as critical 3rd party data sources such as Ecovadis, DNB, BVD and internal KPI data.
- The integrated solution has increased the information quality on supplier risk factors such as sustainability, financial, supply criticality and delivery performance risks.
- Quality and efficiency gains have further been achieved by better transparency of the supplier activities and the connection to the business, e.g. supplier performance, audit and certificate tracking, as well as sourcing and contract activities – all in one system and with a 360 view on the supplier record. This has enabled Americas and Europe to streamline and harmonize the supplier management processes.
- Additionally, the sub-tier supplier traceability for certain commodities is a major business advantage, once fully enabled.
The implementation took approximately eight months from mobilization to project go-live. The Stretch team continued to support on Ivalua technical advisory and competence uplift, with the objective of enabling the customer’s operating team to become self-sufficient on Ivalua.
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