Apsolut is part of the digital procurement transformation at GEA
As one of the largest system providers for the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries, GEA is highly diversified worldwide. The company has developed an extremely heterogeneous IT
infrastructure consisting of more than 60 ERP systems, which are to be replaced by a single ERP instance: SAP S/4HANA.
In the search for a suitable platform to automate the new source-to-pay process, the choice fell on SAP Ariba Guided Buying. This solution offers GEA the flexibility to map the purchasing requirements of their various company units. Moreover, Guided Buying is in line with GEA’s global digitalisation strategy and can be seamlessly integrated into the existing multi-ERP system environment. The connection to the strategic Ariba functions, which GEA had already introduced for sourcing and contract management with suppliers, is just as simple.
To further facilitate communication with the existing ERP system landscape, SAP S/4HANA Central Procurement (CP) was also introduced. CP acts as an integration layer in which the procurement processes from different ERP systems can be merged, centrally controlled and standardised. Following the project launch in March 2021, GEA completed the pilot phase the following autumn, rolling out Ariba Guided Buying and S/4HANA Central Procurement to five country operations in Europe and Asia. As expected, the combined use of the two procurement solutions offers significant advantages, such as an intuitive user interface that allows them to order items from predefined catalogues – whether it is hardware, software, office supplies, energy or marketing services – with just a few clicks. GEA considers it another great success that Guided Buying was able to raise the catalogue quota to 30 per cent related to the number of transactions.
At the same time, the new solution ensures transparency, as it provides a comprehensive overview of requesters, requirements, suppliers and prices. Once Guided Buying has been rolled out to all other GEA legal entities, GEA will for the first time have the opportunity to view all indirect procurement processes in a single central system.
After completion of the pilot project, the two new SAP procurement solutions will be rolled out to further 22 legal entities, then step by step across the group. The entire implementation will be supported by apsolut, specialists in Intelligent Spend Management and Digital Business Transformation.
Manoj Kanal is Managing Director of apsolut GCC, located in Dubai apsolut is an established partner for SAP and SAP Ariba on-premise, cloud and hybrid procurement solutions, with expertise ranging from SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass to SAP S/4HANA. We are an SAP Gold Partner, multi-awarded SAP Ariba MEE Partner of the Year, an SAP development innovation partner and solution partner of United VARs, the global alliance of top-rated SAP solution providers.
apsolut operates from our offices across Europe and Asia in Bangalore, Beijing, Bielefeld, Dubai, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hyderabad, London, Madrid, Málaga, Paris, Prague, Shanghai, Stuttgart, Tianjin, Vienna, Vijayawada, Warsaw and Zurich. With partners VIVO Consulting and Bloom Consulting, apsolut is also active in Latin America and Australia/New Zealand
For more information:
www.ap-solut.com
info@ap-solut.com
