Going through the potential for an financial recession, one of many world’s main skilled companies corporations felt the urgency to enhance its grasp on spend administration – the follow of totally understanding and managing provider relations and firm buying.

With 738,000 staff and $3.8 billion in companies contracts, it was essential for Accenture to not solely determine each greenback being spent but additionally assess whether or not the group was totally exploiting every expenditure.

However a way of frustration pervaded the corporate, as procurement groups complained about restricted visibility into contract phrases and challenges monitoring assertion of labor (SOW) agreements, pacts specifying objectives, and deadlines anticipated of exterior staff.

The capability to generate the SOW contracts and successfully handle companies spend depended upon the area since every was reliant on totally different processes and documentation necessities.

Insufficient companies spend visibility additionally elevated publicity to native authorized and regulatory dangers.

Likewise, clients had been unhappy with a procurement course of that was disjointed and rigid when fast adjustments had been wanted.  

Enhancements had been wanted and the deadline was tight.

“Procurement features require numerous effort and time working with suppliers to barter the perfect contract with the perfect phrases,” mentioned Patricia Miller, Accenture’s interim Chief Procurement Officer (CPO), “but when we’re not capable of evaluate the delivered service towards that settlement in a scientific means, how can we guarantee that the hard-earned negotiated phrases had been utilized?” 

To alleviate this quandary, Accenture launched a marketing campaign to construct a vigorous, dynamic procurement perform to unlock extra worth by offering extraordinary visibility into companies spend. 

The worldwide commonplace at lightning pace

Primarily based in Dublin, Eire, Accenture makes a speciality of digital, cloud, and safety know-how methods, consulting, and operations, serving greater than 40 industries in additional than 120 international locations.

Now, because it conceptualized a brand new platform to successfully handle companies spend, it was compelled to alter its deployment system.

Beforehand, deployment planning was laborious, requiring substantial time and funding.  The prolonged course of slowed suggestions on answer design, in addition to supply instances on adjustments.

But, Accenture had a reliable, long-term companion in enterprise useful resource planning (ERP) software program pioneer SAP, first adopting the corporate’s options in 2004.

Because it confronted its newest problem, Accenture selected SAP Fieldglass, a vendor administration system for companies procurement and exterior workforce group, to offer reporting and analytics.

Along with implementing a world commonplace template – slightly than a wide range of country-specific prototypes – the answer can be personalized to satisfy native invoicing, authorized, and regulatory necessities.

From submission to fee, not solely would turnaround time be lowered, however collaboration and communication with suppliers had been about to succeed in unprecedented ranges.

Assembly altering markets and enterprise calls for

The perform was deployed again in 2020 within the first of many country-by-country rollouts.

Though the standard know-how deployment had taken a mean of 1 yr per nation, the expedited timeline enabled 14 international locations to start utilizing the answer inside 12 months.

A world administration staff was additionally fashioned to help the hassle.

Given the significance of the implementation, fixed suggestions was wanted, and the improved know-how amplified the extent of dialogue, streamlining each testing actions and the flexibility to ship required adjustments.

Right this moment, Accenture’s procurement arm is best geared up to satisfy altering market and enterprise calls for than ever earlier than.

For the primary time, Accenture has a heightened understanding of the “hidden” workforce related to its service enterprise.  Since exterior employees could not at all times match conventional profiles, customers are capable of cull contract data to hyperlink particular staff to their particular person ability units.

Defined Jane M. Kennedy, International Exterior Administration Director for Accenture, “Right this moment, we now have much-proved…visibility for administration (resulting from) an internet answer that aligns to every employee’s kind of engagement.” 

Suppliers famous the benefit of transitioning to SAP Fieldglass, and the tempo at which complete corporations had been capable of undertake the platform.

Presently, 2,000 suppliers have carried out the system, whereas $ 1 billion in companies spend are managed by way of the perform every year, leading to a extra clear provide chain and important price financial savings.

That features the lowered charges for doc storage in areas the place procurement practices had been primarily paper primarily based.

Customers report 99% better accuracy, in addition to 7% error discount per 10,000 SOWs.

For creating a world commonplace procurement course of by way of its improvement of a novel answer, Accenture was distinguished as a finalist on the 2023 SAP Innovation Awards, a yearly ceremony honoring organizations utilizing SAP applied sciences to enhance enterprise and society. You possibly can learn their pitch deck to see what they achieved to earn this honor.