Case Study
Sourcing Achieves Savings for Environmental Services Provider
Service Company present in more than 550 communities across North America, leveraging a complex relationship between water, waste and energy to solve environmental challenges and help customers reach their goals
This project was to launch for ten months several strategic sourcing activities with a scope of roughly 15 Direct and Indirect industrial type categories. The expected deliverables were to deliver at minimum 10% savings, to develop the corresponding strategic sourcing position papers and to train the procurement team on strategic sourcing methodologies.
The collection of spend data was especially difficult without any existing P2P tool or adapted processes in place. The fragmented supplier base made it hard to build an external and internal overview cross the different information systems. Last, the lack of strategic supplier or category papers obliged the team to start with basic data collection, aggregation of spend by main categories and suppliers to build step by step an executable action plan.
Our overall approach was to address the spend analysis, to define executable addressable sourcing waves, to deliver savings, and to train the team on strategic sourcing processes. Each of the work-streams were delivered using best practices in strategic sourcing, change management and training.
The various business users and key stakeholders were enthusiastic about the training programs and to learn more about best in class strategic sourcing practices. All of the addressed spend categories had a defined action plan with a new preferred supplier network and the financial results were above target with 16% savings across the addressable spend.