Siemens Case Study

Siemens- Electronic procurement is part of the networking strategy
The business focus of Siemens Oy is product sales, implementation of customer projects, system sales and maintenance. Subcontractors and suppliers play a central role in the implementation of customer projects. Anilinker's ANI®-services has further increased the effectiveness of this cooperation.

Siemens Oy operates in six fields: information technology and communications, industry, power generation, traffic and medical technology.

At present, Siemens has no own production in Finland. Most of the material flow of the order-delivery processes comes from the parent company, Siemens AG, but suppliers external to the group also occupy a key position, especially in the implementation of customer projects. They play a major role, for example, in project deliveries of information technology and communications, industry and power distribution, says Antti Tervo, who is responsible for the development of the purchasing operations of Siemens Oy at the company's Purchasing and Logistics Unit.

He tells that the group has had electronic internal procurement for a long time. On the other hand, there has been no systematic procedure for contacts with external suppliers.

"In this area electronic procurement was introduced in the spring of 2003, and we chose Anilinker as our partner in cooperation, because its ANI®-service provided us a uniform order-delivery-invoicing process with external suppliers and subcontractors. Thanks to it, all orders are now placed using the same system, irrespective of the size of the partner, and the operation does not require considerable resources from the partners."

Flexibility in every respect
When ordering from a supplier external to the group, Siemens sends the orders to the ANI® SupplierWeb service, through which suppliers confirm orders and also invoice Siemens Oy. A supplier may also receive orders through the ANI®-service directly to its own ERP-system, if necessary.

"Thanks to the ANI® SupplierWeb service, we now have just one order-delivery process and one tool, in other words, we order, check confirmations, receive goods, check invoices and send our own invoices to our customers directly from our ERP-system," says Tervo.

When Siemens Oy started to look for different alternatives for standardising its order-delivery processes with external suppliers and subcontractors, the goal was that, from the users' point of view, the new system should look similar to the one used with the group's internal suppliers.

"There was no point in building our own, comprehensive electronic business application, which would have required investments and own maintenance. Moreover, our procurement needs also change with projects, so we needed a system that would be flexible in every respect."

When Siemens about a year ago started to investigate the possibilities of electronifying its order process with subcontractors, Anilinker was already known to it.

We had already cooperated with them in sales order reception. Anilinker's solution was also a perfect fit for that need/electronic procurement. The system was set up very rapidly: after Christmas we reviewed the technical aspects of the system and by the end of April the system was already operational and has functioned ever since without interruptions according to Tervo.

Favourable feedback
According to Tervo, feedback from both users and subcontractors has been encouraging. Siemens has also founded its own HelpDesk service, which suppliers can call should the need arise.

"Many of our suppliers also use ANI® SupplierWeb with their other customers, thereby deriving added value from the system."

In the future, Siemens Oy aims to make its cooperation with service subcontractors even more effective using the ANI® SupplierWeb service.

In particular, purchasing related to installation and design work should be electronified further. The exchange of documents is one area targeted for such development.

Further information about Siemens' procurement at: www.siemens.fi/CMSProcurements.nsf