How Xoomworks helped BA take off

One of the world’s biggest airlines saves time and money by doubling the number of online supplier catalogue

The BA challenge:  E-procurement has been a success at British Airways. Soon after Ariba Buyer was installed in 2001, much of the company’s spend on indirect goods and services was being put through the system.But procurement managers were concerned that many companies registered on the system were not from the preferred suppliers list. And too many purchases were non-standard “freetext” orders. Many advantages of e-procurement were being missed.

They decided to tackle this by increasing the number of electronic catalogues available to users, making the whole e-procurement process simpler and more effective. Many suppliers, however, did not have electronic catalogues. BA needed a partner to work with its own in-house procurement managers, and with selected suppliers, to develop the catalogues and maintain them into the future.

The Xoomworks solution: From the start, Xoomworks demonstrated an understanding of the challenge as a whole. They understood the importance of collaborating closely with BA’s buyers, gaining their confidence, identifying which suppliers would be suitable and then developing the catalogues with them.Xoomworks collaborated with the buyers and suppliers and quickly doubled the number of catalogues available to users of Ariba Buyer. New catalogues installed in the system covered a wide range of goods and services including marketing, tooling, medical supplies, contractors and temporary staff.The continuing BA project involves two stages. First, in the Supplier Enablement stage, Xoomworks works closely with BA to create waves of suppliers to be “catalogue enabled”. This means talking to relevant buyers and suppliers to understand their existing purchasing processes and assess their suitability to being catalogue-enabled.

In the second Data Management stage, a new supplier catalogue and the associated purchasing process is analysed and a process for integrating it into Ariba Buyer is developed. This could mean, for example, the UNSPSC Code used in the catalogue being compared with the Commodity Code Mappings in the Ariba system to make sure items are mapped correctly.

A Catalogue Creation Tool has been developed by Xoomworks to make the whole process simpler and more effective. This enables suppliers to enter their data into the system quickly, while at the same time the information is checked. The result is a fully validated supplier catalogue being loaded onto Ariba Buyer with items and purchasing methods displayed exactly as the buyers and suppliers intend.

“We have a very good working relationship with our colleagues at BA. We’ve been able to apply a very practical, hands-on approach to solving a problem which has led to better use of the technology and consequent savings.”

Ian Dagg, Procurement Practice Lead at Xoomworks