Intelligent Spend Management Award Winners

Award
Intelligent Spend Management Award Winners

March 10, 2022

Roland Berger and SAP are pleased to announce the 2022 Intelligent Spend Management Award winners.

Procurement and spend management are essential parts of business that can steer a company into great success and prosperity. They help companies achieve sustainability goals, promote ethical sourcing and enhance decision making through digitalization and visualization. Many companies are already leaders and innovators in this field, using innovative technology solutions to enhance and transform procurement and spend management.

The participants of the first Intelligent Spend Management Award are leading the charge for this change. Many DACH companies submitted use cases and, from these, 16 final participants were chosen to present their studies during a virtual pitch day. Then, an expert jury panel selected five category winners and one overall winner. Each winner is truly transforming the procurement and spend management landscape.

The winners
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Aldi | ISM Award 2022

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OMV | ISM Award 2022

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Danfoss | ISM Award 2022

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Evonik | ISM Award 2022

Overall winner: OMV

The future of procurement at its best

OMV’s digital procurement vision focuses on reducing manual workload for buyers and bringing the most value to people. The transformation created an IT setup to support the integrated procurement organization and enable users to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on value-oriented work. The system works regardless of a user’s location and is executed from a single source.

To achieve this, OMV harmonized P2P processes with the S/4HANA backend systems and implemented the SAP Central Procurement suite and SAP ARIBA. This created the first complete implementation of SAP Central Procurement worldwide and actively supports M&A strategy and enables scalable integration. The entire procurement solution offered superb digital transformation agility plus holistic processes that prioritized the workload of people.

Sustainability was also incorporated into OMV’s procurement strategy with supplier audits, Together for Sustainability membership and a top ranking in the Ecovadis Score. The reporting system brings visibility to the carbon footprint of every supplier and purchase and becomes a criterion for the evaluation of suppliers.

Business insights & foresights: Evonik Industries

Forecasting with data and precision

Evonik created the Raw Material Advanced Pricing Intelligence Platform (RAPID) with AI-based forecasts. The AI estimates the price of raw materials based on the historical collection of internal and external data. The data RAPID receives comes from a combination of this historical data, expert human knowledge and in-house data scientists.

Using the SAP Analytics Cloud, RAPID’s results create dashboards for data analysis and reporting, and generate unique algorithms and reports to share with internal business partners in real time. As the use of the platform increases, the forecasts become more precise and expansive, outperforming commercially available forecasts.

Since the tool’s implementation in January 2020, over 150 Evonik employees use it in their day-to-day operations. Forecasting has become both easier and more accurate and the platform has contributed significantly to the company's success.

Business network: thyssenkrupp

The synergy of purchasing and sales working in harmony

thyssenkrupp’s procurement aims to do what is best both for the client and the customer. Using the SAP Analytics Cloud, the solution anticipates future cost developments and provides the best possible timing and basis for price negotiations at the supplier and customer level. Information on volume developments is linked with forecasts on raw material prices and information on the financial stability of suppliers and supplemented by internal data. The data is automatically collected in the SAP Analytics Cloud and made available to all responsible parties.

The goal of this tool is to anticipate cost developments as far as possible and provide the best possible timing and basis for price negotiations at the supplier and customer level. In the given solution, information on volume developments is linked with the forecasts on raw material prices as well as information on the financial stability of suppliers and supplemented by internal data. A task force coordinates negotiations about targets and timing with suppliers and customers.

Sustainability & integrity: Aldi South Group

Important innovation for sustainability and compliance

Aldi South Group and SAP have integrated Production Facility features directly into Ariba software to provide an integrated view of the procurement process. This ensures that Aldi Süd is using compliant Production Facilities during tendering and contracting processes. This innovative project took two years to complete.

The digital solution also integrates audit/certificate data into the procurement process, allowing buyers to make an informed decision about the contracted supplier and its production site. This helps Aldi South Group mitigate risks and follow their Global Corporate Responsibility strategy.

Operational excellence: Danfoss

Managing big data for success in a challenging environment

Danfoss has created an automated system that simplifies large, complex data for everyone. They have developed an automated Big Data CBOM (Compare Bills of Materials) analysis that acts as a data pool of the analysis of direct and indirect spending. Previously, checking that all bills of materials were updated with the correct pricing information was a laborious weeks-long process. This new, automated solution carries out the process in one day.

This advanced system removes the risk of human error and frees up workers’ times to do more value-added work. It also identifies the best pricing solutions.

Organizational agility & 21st century skills: E.ON

Managing the Cultural Change Process

E.ON wanted to unify a complex process landscape by managing the integration with RWE. The goal was to integrate, harmonize and digitize the entire supply chain IT landscape within 24 months. To accomplish this, the P2P landscape was renewed by implementing SAP Ariba with a single, custom-built template integrated with S/4 Hana.

The project covered 14 countries, over 24 subsidiaries, 15,000 international customers and seven SAP systems (24 SAP clients). This impressive network size sets it apart from other procurement transformations.

The finalists

In addition to the six winners, ten other use cases made it to the final round of the Intelligent Spend Management Award 2022. These finalists presented their cases on Pitch Day via Microsoft Teams. All winners and finalists will gain access to the prestigious Spend Management Leaders League. This exclusive group includes company representatives from the finalists and winners. League members can enjoy networking opportunities, educational webinars and more.

  • A.P. Moller Maersk: SlingBid – Digitized Inland Ad Hoc Quotations
  • Bühler: Application for monitoring of raw material market
  • CLAAS: CLAAS Supplier Feedback Survey
  • Coca-Cola Europacific Partners: Intelligent spend management with IBM Watson Spend IQ
  • DB Schenker: Future Readiness Global Spend Governance
  • DEUTZ: Digitization of risk management in purchasing
  • Diehl Metall Stiftung: Business Intelligence & Analytics in Purchasing Controlling
  • Henkel Strat. Business Solutions: Digitalization of Warehouse ordering process
  • Norsk Hydro: The Spend Cube
  • Raiffeisen Bank International: Procurement Staff Development Guide

Further readings