Erik Siekmann is a digital marketing expert and knows the challenges that marketing buyers have with the digital transformation.

presented by: Metroplan/Onventis 11A C2FO

Some of the leading providers for solutions in the procurement industry discuss the current and future challenges of the industry.

Procurement as a partner of its internal customers in the search and selection of Professional Services providers: From demand specification and vendor pre-qualification to RFP and quality assurance, technology enables procurement to add great value to its internal customers when working with Professional Services providers. At the same time, it reduces Maverick Buying, increases Customer Satisfaction, ensures Compliance, and optimizes Costs. This way, internal customers, procurement, and the providers benefit.

It is the goal of any procurement organisation to conclude the best possible framework agreements with suppliers in order to achieve economies of scale, among other things. Furthermore, the continuous replenishment of components purchased in addition must be ensured in order to avoid stoppage in production, for example. The collaborative project, "Artificial intelligence for data-driven definition of procurement strategies" between Microsense GmbH and the Institute for Logistics and Business Management at Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) seizes on these challenges and addresses them using applications from the artificial intelligence sector. A concept is being developed that determines customer-specific requirements on the basis of structured data and the use of machine learning applications and then determines appropriate procurement strategies. This means that the best possible conditions can be achieved with suppliers, and delivery bottlenecks or even failures can be avoided.

A bit more than 3 years ago, Grünenthal redefined its procurement organization as a global function. After the first year, which was mainly focused on delivering savings, we began to draw our excellence-roadmap and to develop the function step by step to become a top-notch procurement organization. In the past 2 years, we set the basis in topics as Supplier Relationship Management, Category-Strategies, a tailored taxonomy, dashboards and KPIs to steer the function, a Procurement Academy or the digitalization of our processes – to name just a few. Now we arrived in the most important and also most challenging part of our journey: to move a whole procurement organization to adapt it’s way of working towards new standards and raised requirements.

In this talk you will learn what successful transport cost management looks like. From preparing a tender, incl. data generation, to implementation and follow-up, we will give you an insight into the man vs. machine (tendering platform) comparison. You will learn which conditions should be fulfilled in order to optimise processes and sustainably decrease the cost structure.