Stora Enso

 apsolut press release in the IT-Director newsletter (12/2011): New SAP functions for Supplier Relationship Management. The power of integrated purchasing processes

Medium: December issue of the IT-Director newsletter

Previously, Stora Enso's procurement of indirect materials relied on a high-maintenance older release of SAP SRM (3.0), running in parallel with an SAP back-end system and several satellite solutions for contract management and supplier evaluation. This landscape was made even more complex by virtue of the fact that employees in each country had to use different processes to order office supplies, workwear or services. As Purchasing Manager Jürgen Schellewald, who led the implementation project at Stora Enso, explains: “We had a serious lack of transparency in relation to our procurement of indirect materials, especially as many transactions were completed without any ordering system. Another issue we had with the existing system landscape was that supplier integration simply wasn't an option.” To address these deficiencies, Stora Enso, with the support of apsolut, rolled out the latest version of SAP SRM (7.0) across the entire group in June 2011. This project required the enhancement and update of the “Self Service Procurement” module, which was part of Release 3.0. Today, the company's approximately 1,500 users in production and administration now have access to a fast, user-friendly shopping cart system that allows them to create and manage their own purchasing transactions. The wood and paper products expert is making increasing use of electronic catalogs in order to automate purchasing processes as far as possible.

SRM 7.0 Self Service Procurement offers Stora Enso many benefits, including seamless integration into its existing SAP portal solution. For one thing, a unified platform now provides users with role-based access to the purchasing solution and allows them to personalize their user interface. Another new feature is that Stora Enso can use the organizational structures from the SAP HR system directly for access permissions, which eliminates the need to define the organization in duplicate. The e-mail-based approval workflow simplifies the task of approvers and has the additional benefit of time-saving.

Seamless integration

Stora Enso also implemented some new SAP SRM functions, including a supplier portal for collaborative management of purchasing processes, contract and supplier management, and electronic RFx and auctions. These functions are currently used by around 100 users in the company's purchasing division. apsolut, in its capacity as implementation partner on this project, also enhanced the standard SAP solutions with its own solution module for supplier registration. This allows Stora Enso's suppliers to register in the SRM supplier portal, where they can be approved by the buyers.

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