Situation

This Telecom provider with over 4 million customers in The Netherlands provides cable television, mobile telephony services and internet services. Axxerion is widely used within this company, not only to support facility related processes but also for processes such as Site Management, Access Control and IT Asset Management. Spacewell uses partner XXelerate to carry out projects and to provide functional management services.

Complication

VodafoneZiggo had 2 procurement systems in use. There are orders that cannot be handled via one of these 2 systems, for example because the selected supplier is not known in either procurement system, or because it concerns an incidental order for which it is not necessary to onboard the supplier. For these orders there is a 3rd process, called the Tail Spend process. This process was not supported via automation but went through email, telephone, etc. and VodafoneZiggo saw opportunies to improve the process and use Axxerion to support it..

Request

The Excellence Center Procurement has requested to automate the Tail Spend process with Axxerion, in a project with the following objectives:

• Handle orders effectively (targeted, without waste) and efficiently (at the least possible cost) at the other “incidental” suppliers
• Keep the number of suppliers in the Tail Spend category as small as possible
• Being and staying in control of purchasing company-wide, procuration in order
• Simplify the ordering process for the end user
• Have management information available
• Long term: rationalizing the number of suppliers, with the principle that scale will lead to purchasing benefits

Solution

After an extensive brainstorm session, a project plan was made and the implementation of Axxerion started. Over a period of approximately six months, various sprints were carried out and an extensive workflow was realized in Axxerion, which ensures:

Carrying out various checks to see whether the order meets the criteria for Tail Spend, among other things:

• a certain order amount
• whether orders have already been placed with this supplier via Tail Spend
• whether the supplier is known within 1 of the two other purchasing systems
  or not another supplier should be selected for the ordering service / product
• Procurement, with the possibility for Management Assistants to approve on behalf of managers
• Automatic transfer of approval tasks to substitutes if there is no timely response, taking into account holidays
• Recording of the invoice (s) and payment details when ordering

Other functionality that has been delivered:

• Web service interface with the external party that handles the payment of invoices
• Reports for Procurement managers
• Email notifications
• The Tailspend process has been delivered to the customers satisfaction.