Optimisation of purchasing and procurement

Increase purchasing value

Experience shows that spending on production materials, merchandise, payments in kind, services and investments make up two thirds of a company’s overall costs. Metro plan distinguishes between the procurement requirements and purchasing requirements.

The challenge of purchasing is fulfilling the following tasks in tandem and in full:

  • Compensating for the fall in price of particular products through correspondingly high savings and rationalisations. It can make sense to move valuable and administrative tasks to Eastern Europe.
  • Create maximum transparency on current and international procurement markets
  • Integrate divisions responsible for purchasing and procurement in all selection processes early on
  • Continuous supplier optimisation
  • Guaranteeing uniform and efficient processes in purchasing and procurement at all sites
  • Fulfilling all legal and customs requirements
  • Complying with all compliance requirements (e.g. dual-control principle)

Metroplan-Approach and methodology

Metroplan supports its customers in optimising purchasing and procurement as a whole, or with regard to individual elements. The following three-stage optimisation procedure has been proven to work:

  1. Purchasing audit and analysis phase
  • Purchasing audit using approx. 100 company-specific questions in the field of purchasing and procurement at the production sites
  • Access to ERP master and transaction data using (SAP-certified) interfaces to derive purchase volumes for the product group structure etc.
  • Analysis of purchase controlling using professional software

     2. Optimisation and implementation

  • Transfer of best practice approaches from other companies and fields
  • Potential workshops per commodity group to identify concrete optimisation methods
  • Optimisation of IT systems
  • Implementation of pilot projects to show the feasibility in the short-term
  • Determine a clear commodity structure/supplier strategy using a portfolio strategy
  • Define rules for cooperation between purchasing and departments
  • Adjust the organisational and operational structure in purchasing

     3. Reporting and roll-out

  • Implementation of supportive tools (in ERP SAP system, but also with standard MS Office programs)
  • Implementation of a reporting system with monthly reports which clearly show changes relating to target achievement
  • Takeover of ongoing analysis as a managed shared service for Metroplan customers (e.g. for purchasing control, supplier search in Eastern Europe, etc.)

Customer benefits

  • Maximise targets to increase the value contribution of purchasing
  • Improve the purchasing conditions of goods, services, material costs and capital goods
  • Adjust the purchasing organisation and purchasing/procurement processes to future requirements
  • Reliable integration of purchasing into product development
  • Coordinated specifications and IT systems contribute to the more efficient design of procurement and purchasing

Your contact person

Dr. Thomas Mielke

Managing Director Metroplan Process Management GmbH
send an email
+49 40 20 000 750
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