Sapa leverages Corcentric technology to improve upstream spend management

Two global aluminum leaders Orkla (legacy SAPA) and Hydro, embarked on a joint venture known as SAPA based in Oslo, Norway. The merger would make SAPA a leader in the global aluminum market, with more than 23,000 employees doing business in at least 40 countries worldwide. However, with a billion in synergies promised to shareholders, the merger created an unknown spend landscape and the enterprise was faced with the challenge of establishing and improving spend visibility in what had become a highly decentralized organization.

At the time of the merger, the former SAPA was using a homegrown SAP based system for spend visibility which was rolled out across the entire company. The ten-year-old tool required some external engines for supplier classification and spend analytics. The tool, however, could not provide ease of use for managing spend visibility and would not be able to accommodate the new requirements SAPA needed after the joint venture.

Procurement began evaluating the cost of the current system versus what was available in the market. The core project team, Lisa Lindstedt and William Wahren, evaluated tools and also considered input from others. With the joint venture taking place, it was not clear who all the stakeholders were. However, the strategic objective was clear: to implement a new spend management solution in order to provide better spend visibility across all entities and ERP systems within the organization.

According to project sponsor Peter den Dikken, “Some of the main criteria included an improved user interface, [determining] how spend would be classified, and the flexibility in the overall implementation process. For instance, with the joint venture, SAPA had 115 sites to implement, so this process was critical. The tool had to also be user friendly and be implemented within a reasonable time. The possibility to link [the] system to other tools, such as eSourcing, was also a serious consideration for future deployment and linking to spend visibility”.

Ultimately, SAPA decided to engage with Corcentric for its Sourcing and Analytics technology and spend classification services. It was evident to SAPA that there were several solutions out there, but none other than Corcentric were more willing and able to work closely with the SAPA for addressing the complexities of their implementation requirements and its tight deadlines.

Lisa Lindstedt notes, “One of the reasons we selected Corcentric was because they were so flexible. Dealing with the complexities of the joint venture, we could make as much of a start as possible without knowing our entire scope up front.”

While not using the tool on an everyday basis, SAPA employees immediately saw the benefits of having the new spend visibility solution in place by being able to easily pull up reports when needed on a self-service basis. They’ve also used the data for a sourcing pipeline, and some locations even use more information regarding the supply base and for benchmarking, achieving more visibility when additional data was added, which has been helpful for sourcing work.

“In the end, 98% of all spend was retrieved from 44 out of 52 systems. Spend was verified and loaded that culminated in a total of seven waves (batches) covering four major business areas. Hitting all the target dates on time and under budget, the project ended up taking three months.”

~ Peter den Dikken, Project Sponsor

Today, there are 70+ users at SAPA who utilize the spend reports, which are available regularly. Using Analytics from Corcentric, SAPA is actively monitoring purchasing cost development, price development and its entire supply base. And further, by partnering with Corcentric, SAPA today is continuing its efforts with the deployment of Supplier Information Management for further improving upstream spend management efforts that will be visible within Analytics.