Context
Committed to reducing costs, this industrial Corporation wanted to harmonise its Purchasing and Supply Chain practices for “small supplies and tools” across its 39 entities.
CKS was mandated to audit Purchasing and Supply Chain practices for “small supplies and tools” across the Enterprise's entities and to propose an optimisation plan in the short- and medium-terms. The work carried out by CKS' teams was structured along 3 axes:
- Purchasing strategy and organisation
- Consultation and supplier relationship management processes
- Supply chain processes
Objectives
- Extend best practices of Purchasing/Supply Chain and create synergies among the different entities
- Reduce non-compliant purchases and streamline the supplier pool
- Evaluate the possibility of implementing an e-Procurement and/or Purchasing Card system
Resources
For the complete duration of the mission, CKS mobilised a team of four consultants.
The process was set up in a number of stages:
- The category of “small supplies and tools” was divided up.
- Indirect Purchasing Data was collected and processed from the existing ERP.
- Spending was analysed along 5 different axes:
- Purchasing volume
- Number of orders
- Average cost of orders
- Suppliers
- Whether purchases were made in accordance with framework contracts (or not)
A survey concerning Purchasing and Supply Chain was carried out across all 39 entities after which the results were analysed.
A plan of actions was set up according to priorities as defined by maximum potential gains and in accordance with the “maturity” of the entities.
The possibility of implementing an e-Procurement and/or Purchasing Card system was evaluated by comparing different off-the-shelf software solutions and calculating their ROI.
Results
A Purchasing and Supply Chain strategy for the category of “small supplies and tools”.
A communication scheme for Strategic Purchasing was set up across the different entities to share best practices in Purchasing.
A precise list of expenditures mainly allowed the enterprise to:
- increase the percentage of contracts following the set contract framework
- streamline the Supplier pool
- control spending
