Sourcing of Procurement Systems
“FourPL were able to draw on their broad experience of the market place together with practical implementation experience to assist the customer in scoping and outlining their requirements.” Chris Poulton, Project Manager
THE CHALLENGE
Our client is undertaking a major transformation program and one of the components of this is Procurement and Purchasing. The need for support and facilitation of an Expression of Interest (EOI), specifically related to the Source- to-Pay function, was identified. The challenge for our client was to define and consolidate the large number of both functional and non-functional business requirements to engage with the broader market, and determine the potential software vendors in the market that could meet their mandatory requirements and have capacity and capability to deliver the solution either directly or through their eco-system and partner network.
THE PROJECT – KEY DRIVERS
- Enable efficiencies across end-to-end S2P processes
- Deliver standardization in the re-use of procurement, sourcing, and contract templates
- Drive to ‘easy to use’ user experiences
- Reduce paper handling and manual effort, whilst improving bench-marking, analytics and supplier performance
FOURPL’S ROLE
FourPL provided management, support and guidance throughout the entire process – from using our domain expertise in conducting the numerous requirement gathering workshops, through to the consolidation of business-wide requirements and the establishment of the overarching EOI evaluation process. FourPL facilitated the evaluation criteria and processes, including governance processes, ‘short listing’ of prospective vendors, and all the accompanying analytics to support a further RFP process for a source to pay solution. The resultant analytics, justifications and recommendations were presented to the senior leadership team.
THE SOLUTION
The outcome of this would allow our client to have a detailed definitive set of EOI documents, together with supporting evaluation processes, with which to go to market with in selecting a suitable cloud based solution to support both their procurement and purchasing strategy going forward.
OUTCOMES ACHIEVED
FourPL presented the client with a comprehensive 77-page EOI Findings document with recommendations for 3 primary contenders following the evaluation of 12 individual vendor responses. The EOI evaluation provided the client with the necessary market and product information to reassess the current strategic positioning and IT platforms.
WHY FOURPL?
- Strategic – FourPL worked closely with the CIO in defining the current IT landscape, understanding the business objectives, and finally shaping the Essential Energy’s IT Roadmap going forward
- Relevant domain expertise – with a number of highly experienced consultants, specializing in both Information Technology and Supply Chain, FourPL boasts a pool of 25+ year industry experts to make a direct contribution to an engagement.
- Cross-functional Capability – resource numbers, and hence costs, were kept to a minimum because FourPL was able to draw on individuals with client industry understanding, project management capability, domain expertise together with business analytical skills.
- Independence – FourPL was able to provide wide industry insight whilst remaining system and product agnostic, delivering impartial and detailed recommendations to the senior decision makers.
Chris Poulton was responsible for managing the project, and attributes the success to the great team and skills available to him for delivery. Chris is a principle and director of FourPL and has a strong track record in delivery including project management change/transformation and solution architecture across multiple industries including large public sector, FMCG/CPG, logistics and manufacturing organisations