Highlights
- Spend brought under control with purchase orders and automated invoice matching.
- Significant change management programme successfully completed.
- Item categorisation enables analysis of spend.
- Foundation built for strategic sourcing initiatives.
About the Client
Owned by Bain Capital, Consolis is a leading industrial Group providing smart, sustainable precast concrete structures for the transportation, utilities and building sectors, with more than 11,000 employees in 21 countries throughout the world.
Challenges
Following its acquisition of Consolis in 2017, the private equity company Bain Capital undertook a programme to drive savings in digital procurement. It quickly became clear that any savings identified may be unsustainable, owing to a systemic lack of S2P controls within the organisation.
There was no tradition of raising requisitions or purchase orders, no formal pre-spend approval hierarchy was in place, and payments were made on receipt of invoices, without matching to an order. There was little analysis of the needs of buyers and no opportunities for contract-led savings.
The Solution
Consolis researched the leading S2P solutions on the market, starting with 8 candidate systems, reduced to 4 after providers completed a questionnaire.
Based on its user friendliness, fit to business requirements and integration potential, Coupa was selected as the preferred solution. Following discussions with 2 potential partners recommended by Coupa, Xoomworks Procurement was selected to manage the project.
It was recognised from the start that the main challenge would be the deep cultural and process changes that would need to be put in place across the organisation. The systems implementation was secondary to this objective. The business case deliberately excluded efficiency savings from the expected benefits, as these would come later, when the solution was bedded in and strategic purchasing functions could be exploited. Intensive workshops were held to understand business requirements and finalise the solution design.
Running in parallel with building a new purchasing organisation, and a product categorisation project, Coupa was implemented in Consolis in Sweden. The rollout sequence was carefully planned, with Sweden being followed by Finland, the second largest entity in the group, with a complex IT environment for integration. Lastly the smaller countries would be implemented.
The implementation landscape was complicated by the simultaneous rollout of a new ERP system for the organisation, which needed to be coordinated with the Coupa project.
“The solutions architects are extremely knowledgeable and with their challenge and encouragement we have achieved the objectives we set ourselves. The seamless cooperation between Xoomworks and Coupa made the job so much easier for us. Xoomworks should nurture this relationship as it provides great added value for its customers.”
Malin Domstad, Head of Procurement at Consolis.
Download our client story to read more about the key benefits Consolis was able to achieve from their Coupa implementation.
