On the 1st of March our Team of Consultants attended the eWorld Procurement & Supply conference. During the event, we had the chance to host a Q&A session with Telehouse – one of our Coupa P2P clients. Telehouse is one of the leading names in the colocation and data centre industry, with a market presence of over 25 years.
We are proud to have been selected the implementation partner for a Coupa P2P solution.
This joint seminar gave us the opportunity to explain some of the challenges, lessons and benefits of implementing a cloud-based procurement solution in just a few months. Below you can read some of the highlights of our Q&A:
Why did Telehouse implement P2P?
Telehouse was looking to implement a P2P solution having 3 main KPIs in mind:
- increase contract compliance to cover all addressable spend
- decrease maverick spend especially in Germany and France
- decrease 1.5 FTE as a result of a more efficient process, less manual work and enrich employee’s skills instead of just cutting FTE overall.
This is the 1st European project aimed at harmonizing, maximising opportunity for Smart Procurement and increasing organisational maturity in the P2P area.
The UK already had a legacy on-premise solution, but wanted more ownership and Coupa is more hands-on, plus it offers security guarantee and flexibility to partner up for a rapid 6-month deployment.
How was their mindset changed?
Change is a continuous process and learning a new way of working can be challenging, but with a gradual approach and a focus on user engagement from each country (with multi-lingual consultants on site) Xoomworks has been a big support.
Telehouse has now a better understanding on how the industry is evolving, to a great extend due to the best practices shared by the Xoomworks’ Coupa Consultants.
The European design of the project as a whole is still evolving, it is continually reviewed although the fundamental core is common across the 6 sites which, at times, can be challenging the local ways of working.
What were the challenges?
Change doesn’t come without challenge, but our consultants have helped Telehouse work around any obstacles that emerged from the project.
User engagement was one of the most sensitive challenges the team had to overcome. This was possible due to on-site readiness with a super user structure in place instead of a “bulldoze over” approach. During User Acceptance Testing the main focus was around simulating reality and trying to discover gaps in real life scenarios.
Any supplier enablement issues have been solved by structuring this into Phase I and Phase II with a strategy aiming at covering 20% electronically by 31st of March 2018.
Anticipating unexpected events is essential in projects of this scale. By doing so our Xoomworks Coupa Consultants were able to handle 2 Go Lives simultaneously – due to a 6 weeks’ delay in Germany it meant that France was going live at the same time.
Unexpected benefits?
Finance was exposed which led to harmonization.
Platform and release management?
By challenging the status quo our team was able to increase efficiency and create a new Unit for Business Process Optimisation.
Regarding future plans, Telehouse is considering Xoomworks’ Service Desk, which would allow its team to focus on the core objectives to drive value for the business. For its procurement roadmap Telehouse is also considering adding Sourcing to the suite as well as Analytics.
For more information on a cloud based procurement solution download our “Moving to a Procurement Cloud – The 5 differences to consider” whitepaper
Contact us – Have a more detailed discussion with one of our procurement experts on how a P2P system could help meet your business needs.
On the 1st of March our Team of Consultants attended the eWorld Procurement & Supply conference. During the event, we had the chance to host a Q&A session with Telehouse – one of our Coupa P2P clients. Telehouse is one of the leading names in the colocation and data centre industry, with a market presence of over 25 years.
We are proud to have been selected the implementation partner for a Coupa P2P solution.
This joint seminar gave us the opportunity to explain some of the challenges, lessons and benefits of implementing a cloud-based procurement solution in just a few months. Below you can read some of the highlights of our Q&A:
Why did Telehouse implement P2P?
Telehouse was looking to implement a P2P solution having 3 main KPIs in mind:
This is the 1st European project aimed at harmonizing, maximising opportunity for Smart Procurement and increasing organisational maturity in the P2P area.
The UK already had a legacy on-premise solution, but wanted more ownership and Coupa is more hands-on, plus it offers security guarantee and flexibility to partner up for a rapid 6-month deployment.
How was their mindset changed?
Change is a continuous process and learning a new way of working can be challenging, but with a gradual approach and a focus on user engagement from each country (with multi-lingual consultants on site) Xoomworks has been a big support.
Telehouse has now a better understanding on how the industry is evolving, to a great extend due to the best practices shared by the Xoomworks’ Coupa Consultants.
The European design of the project as a whole is still evolving, it is continually reviewed although the fundamental core is common across the 6 sites which, at times, can be challenging the local ways of working.
What were the challenges?
Change doesn’t come without challenge, but our consultants have helped Telehouse work around any obstacles that emerged from the project.
User engagement was one of the most sensitive challenges the team had to overcome. This was possible due to on-site readiness with a super user structure in place instead of a “bulldoze over” approach. During User Acceptance Testing the main focus was around simulating reality and trying to discover gaps in real life scenarios.
Any supplier enablement issues have been solved by structuring this into Phase I and Phase II with a strategy aiming at covering 20% electronically by 31st of March 2018.
Anticipating unexpected events is essential in projects of this scale. By doing so our Xoomworks Coupa Consultants were able to handle 2 Go Lives simultaneously – due to a 6 weeks’ delay in Germany it meant that France was going live at the same time.
Unexpected benefits?
Finance was exposed which led to harmonization.
Platform and release management?
By challenging the status quo our team was able to increase efficiency and create a new Unit for Business Process Optimisation.
Regarding future plans, Telehouse is considering Xoomworks’ Service Desk, which would allow its team to focus on the core objectives to drive value for the business. For its procurement roadmap Telehouse is also considering adding Sourcing to the suite as well as Analytics.
For more information on a cloud based procurement solution download our “Moving to a Procurement Cloud – The 5 differences to consider” whitepaper
Contact us – Have a more detailed discussion with one of our procurement experts on how a P2P system could help meet your business needs.