Unified Procurement Platform Transforms Supplier Management for a Global Networking Technology Leader

Client

A multinational digital communications technology conglomerate that develops networking hardware, software, telecommunications equipment, and other technology services and products.

Challenges

The procurement business unit had a complex and time-consuming quoting and sourcing process for all commodity managers and their 6,000+ external manufacturing partners worldwide. The existing manual process lacked automation, making it challenging to launch RFQs, receive quotes from partners, and award contracts based on the criteria set by global process owners. Managing international and regional negotiations with suppliers and partners was also challenging due to the absence of a single, unified platform.

LTM Solution

• Team LTM developed a procurement platform that could handle quotes worth over USD 10 billion annually, using SAP HANA's in-memory capabilities for real-time analytics and SAP’s OnLine Transaction Processing (OLTP) system for transaction processing.
• A what-if simulation feature enabled commodity managers to estimate spend savings and optimize split percentage among suppliers based on business metrics. The solution also included alert notifications to commodity leads and partners for pending negotiations, streamlining the supplier management process.
• The platform was delivered in different languages to cater to our client's diverse supplier base. Informatica ETL jobs were used for real-time data ingestion from Oracle ERP to SAP HANA and Google Angular JS framework for UI access to internal and external users. 
• The solution enabled centralized data management for global suppliers, including past pricing records, quote comparison, RFQ evaluations and awarding, and pre- and post-award analytics. 
• The entire program was developed in a distributed agile mode across geographies.

Business Benefits

• USD 10 billion worth of quotes handled annually on a single platform.
• Reduction in quoting process from weeks to days.
• Increased efficiency levels led to significant cost savings.
• Improvement in supplier relationships.