This October, the Future of Sourcing Awards will celebrate organizations and individuals that have shown innovation, leadership and transformation in categories that are critical to the sourcing industry. Interviews with the finalists provide helpful insight about their projects, the problem they sought to solve and the impact to their organizations. Read how GEP partnered with a multinational Oil & Gas company to implement a single, integrated procurement platform that could replace the legacy system already in place and also be fine-tuned to incorporate regional nuances.
Can you outline why your team embarked on this project and the problem that needed to be solved?
How were things done originally and what was the inspiration to innovate the process?
What KPIs did you use to measure success for this project? (For example: performance, customer satisfaction, revenue, sales or relevant financial gains?)
- Time taken to replace the legacy systems with SMART by GEP for end-to-end procurement operations
- User adoption across different global locations
- Number of suppliers onboarded
- Number of sourcing events conducted using the platform
- Time taken to complete each procurement activity
- Number of savings projects initiated, and savings realized
How do you plan to ensure that the new model remains relevant and adapts to the future needs of the market?
What advice do you have for those who may want to implement this innovative approach in their own organizations?
- Identify clear goals and objectives for the program, ranging from tangible business case benefits to intangible goals such as improving end user experience
- Ensure alignment with senior stakeholders on goals, project timing, staffing and approach
- Agile deployment methodology with continuous user engagement and the willingness to iterate and improve design continuously
- Suppliers having a seat at the table as very important stakeholders in the S2P process
- Organizational focus on process optimization, master data harmonization and change management
- Not being restricted to the program as a technology-only project and having a razor focus on the end-user experience, adoption and the business benefit
How did you get your company and/or stakeholders to get on board and support this project?
- The client's legacy system was outdated and on-premise. Upgrading the system and implementing the change across all locations would be a time-consuming and expensive affair.
- Deploying cloud-native SMART by GEP unified procurement platform with functionalities supported by Artificial Intelligence, RPA and NLP, among others, was a better option compared to upgrading the aging infrastructure of the legacy system. The acquisition and operational cost of SMART by GEP was comparatively lower than the cost to upgrade the existing legacy application.
- GEP was open to co-develop, enhance and fine tune SMART by GEP based on the client's requirement to ensure coverage of the end-to-end procurement process
- Internally, with this client, GEP also increased its portfolio of clients in the Oil & Gas industry significantly through the successful implementation of SMART by GEP. The client is currently pleased with the capabilities of the SMART by GEP platform and intends to increase its spectrum of usage within the organization.