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apsolut digitalises indirect procurement at MLP
Company
MLP
Branch
Banken & Insurance
Products
MLP serves as a partner in all financial matters – from investment and retirement planning to insurance
Number of employees
1,377 employees and 2,100 consultants at 90 locations
Assets managed
61 billion euros
Headquarters
Wiesloch, Germany
Websitemlp.de
The Road to Digitalisation and Evolution into Strategic Purchasing
Since 1971, MLP has served as a partner in all financial matters – from retirement planning, insurance and asset management to finance, real estate brokering and banking. Alongside its affiliates Deutschland.Immobilien, DOMCURA, FERI, RVM and TPC, MLP supports private, corporate and institutional clients as a financial services provider. Extensive knowledge transfer takes place within the Group.
The MLP Group manages assets of approximately 57 billion euros and holdings in property insurance of 687 million euros for around 580,000 private clients and 27,400 corporate and institutional clients. MLP decided to digitalise its procurement processes by implementing SAP Ariba Guided Buying, SAP Ariba Buying, catalogue integration via Spot Buy and SAP Ariba Contracts. These solutions provide the necessary level of scalability to support MLP and automate the ordering process.
Once the company had selected SAP Ariba as its chosen tool, it opted for apsolut as its partner for the implementation process. “Even during the first presentation, we realised that we were on the same wavelength as apsolut,” explains Alexander Köhler, purchaser and project manager at MLP. He adds:
“Right from the start, apsolut supported us with the comprehensive experience and expertise they had acquired from their enormous number of past projects. They were able to respond quickly and precisely to our complex requirements and present us with ideal solutions. Thanks to their experience with Ariba, we were able to digitalise our purchasing processes and make them more efficient as a result.”
The new tool has improved data quality and increased transparency, which, in turn, improves adherence to compliance requirements.
Direct integration of a range of catalogues such as Amazon Business means that colleagues’ individual requirements can be easily pooled via a single supplier.
Sabine Schwarz, who is responsible for e-procurement processes at MLP, summarises the project in a highly positive light: “Digitalising our ordering process and pooling purchasing volume has led to greater transparency and significant cost optimisation. The new systems improve reporting, optimise purchasing KPIs and contribute to a reduction in unregulated purchases, also known as maverick buying.”
With its transformation to SAP Ariba, the purchasing organisation positioned itself as a strategic partner within the MLP Group. The purchasing guidelines are digitalised and visibly integrated into Ariba – this includes automatically monitored approval limits, for instance. The introduction of SAP Ariba involved a restructuring of the purchasing organisation; operational and strategic purchasing were clearly separated from one another, and both were redesigned to be more efficient. As a platform, SAP Ariba helps optimise purchasing processes and contributes to increasing efficiency within the company. This restructuring made it possible to improve both day-to-day purchasing and the company’s long-term purchasing strategy in a targeted way. As a next step, MLP and apsolut are jointly exploring the possibility of implementing an AI app in Guided Buying.
100%
Immediately after the project started and Phase 1 was rolled out for headquarters, all of the orders previously entered manually by Purchasing were digitalised via Guided Buying.
The onboarding process for all employees and consultants consisted of two phases. Contracts onboarding will involve several phases. All contracts relevant to purchasing are currently being mapped.
Implemented tools
SAP Ariba Buying
SAP Ariba Catalog
SAP Ariba Contracts
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