CASE STUDY: Siemens – electronic procurement is part of the networking strategy
Background Siemens Osakeyhtiö (Siemens Oy)—the Finnish subsidiary of Siemens AG—has widespread operations in several fields including information technology and communications, industry, power generation, and medical technology. The company’s main business focus is product sales, system sales, customer implementations, and maintenance. Siemens Oy does not have its own production facility in Finland. Instead, its parent company provides inventory for most of Siemens Oy’s supply chain. However, thousands of suppliers and subcontractors worldwide also furnish goods and services to Siemens Oy, especially during customer implementations. They play a major role in delivery of information technology and communications, industry, and power distribution solutions. Challenge Siemens Oy’s internal electronic procurement process has served it effectively for a long time. However, the company had no similar system in place to integrate and communicate with its external suppliers and subcontractors. To streamline its operations, Siemens Oy looked into the possibility of bringing its external order, delivery, and invoicing process online. The company needed a highly flexible solution that it could easily adapt to meet changing procurement requirements. In addition, Siemens Oy wanted the new system to be similar in look and feel to its existing internal system. The company decided against building an application in-house, which would require a significant investment in both development and maintenance. It looked instead to Anilinker Oy (now Liaison Technologies)—an existing business partner—for help. Solution Liaison’s SupplierWeb service was the perfect answer to Siemens Oy’s problem, successfully linking the external elements in the company’s supply chain and maximizing the efficiency of its business workflow. All Siemens Oy partners—regardless of size—now use the same system with minimal integration effort on their part. Liaison provided Siemens Oy with the functionality the company needed in a short time frame. Siemens Oy reviewed the technical specifications after Christmas, and the system was up and running by April. Results SupplierWeb provides Siemens Oy with a unified procurement process. The company places orders, checks confirmations, receives goods, checks supplier invoices, and invoices its customers directly from its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. When placing external orders, Siemens Oy sends them to SupplierWeb. Suppliers receive and confirm the orders in the system and invoice Siemens Oy directly. A supplier may also receive orders directly into its ERP system, if necessary. The system has functioned seamlessly without interruption since it came online, and user feedback has been positive according to Antti Tervo, who is responsible for purchasing operations development in the company’s Procurement & Logistics unit. "Many of our suppliers also use SupplierWeb with their other customers, thereby deriving added value from the system," says Tervo. In the future, Siemens Oy’s goal is to further enhance its external supplier and subcontractor connectivity using SupplierWeb. The company set up a help desk to assist users with questions and problems and would like to further integrate its purchasing tasks related to installation and design work, such as document exchange. |
