Our experienced Team provides independent Project Management Services for Procurement Optimization and Business Transformation Initiatives. We have successfully managed Projects at Fortune 500 companies within European and the US and provide expertise within most industries.

We provide experienced Business Analyst Services to analyze existing procurement processes and develop optimization solutions.
As an independent consulting firm we focus on the best Solution for our customers to ensure long term success.

Long term Success of every solution is based on a reliable design that provides flexibility for future requirements. We design solutions, which are optimized for the individual customer needs and provide a reliable foundation enabling the business to benefit from future optimization potentials.

Our team provides more than 24 years of continues experience within SAP Ariba Spend Management Product Implementations and provides additional services for Zycus Solutions. We provide independent, cost efficient and high quality implementation services based on individual requirements, project and outsourcing activities.

The availability of content rich catalogs as well as the supplier and commodity selection are essential to the user acceptance and usability of the overall solution. We provide a wide range of services to integrate suppliers and fully utilize the potential of Procurement Solutions.

To ensure reliability of Spend Management Solutions we offer independent Quality Assurance Services. We provide guidance for our customers during the implementation phase and post go-live review services.

Business Intelligence

How can someone drive without visibility? When making strategic procurement decisions, complete and up-to-date information is essential. Often already simple questions like "How much did we spend with Supplier XYZ last year" or "What was the spend volume of paper during the last quarter" can highlight the potential gap of access to information.

Business Intelligence Solutions are the single point of contact within procurement organizations, bringing corporate wide spend content into relationship, enrich it (e.g. with commodity classifications, supplier credit ratings etc.) and visualize it.

Having all spend data accessible does not mean that the needed information is available. It needs a user-friendly solution to visualize it, which will soon become the everyday tool for each buyer.

Business Intelligence solutions also provide control for the business to gain visibility into current process activities. If for example a supplier compression program (reduction of the supplier base) is executed, the Business Intelligence solution can provide the business with an easy way to control the progress.

Savings Opportunity Identification

Part Analysis Simple questions like "How many different types of gloves are procured" can highlight opportunities. When analyzing part related spend also equivalent parts can be taken into consideration. The main focus should be to reduce the amount of parts to those required, reducing the amount of suppliers and consolidating the related volume.

Commodity Analysis

How many suppliers do you use in your organization to buy lamps and related accessories? Often standardization and an improved supplier management process can provide access to savings.

Preferred Suppliers should be identified, managed and developed. In many cases preferred suppliers only receive a fraction of the spend they should. Suppliers should also be developed based on opportunities. For example; a supplier can take on additional volume of a commodity, which is similar to ones already provided. This allows the supplier to grow and allows the buying organization to consolidate unmanaged spend.

Supplier Compression

The consolidation and reduction of unmanaged spend should be part of supplier compression initiatives. In areas where many suppliers are used for a limited amount of spend, a consolidation of this spend to be purchased through a distributor could deliver savings and reduce internal process costs.

Direct Manufacture Relationships

Spend analysis based on Manufacture information can provide access to additional saving opportunities. When goods and services are currently procured through a distributer from the same Manufacture and the spend reaches a defined level, it can be more efficient to buy directly from the Manufacture.

2nd Tier Purchasing

Contracted Suppliers will procure goods and services to fulfill the agreed terms of the agreement. Lowering the suppliers cost will provide saving opportunities for the buying organization.

By analyzing the supplier's activity and allowing access to contracts of the buying organization additional savings can be achieved.

Cash Flow Management

An improved cash flow management can easily outperform any traditional investment and reduce the risk of such to an absolute minimum.

Cash rich organizations can negotiate payment opportunities with their suppliers to benefit from discounts for early payment easily reaching 1 to 2% per invoice. The resulting yearly gain outperforms most traditional investments.

When focusing on enhancing the available cash within the corporation, different payment terms can be negotiated and communicated for selected contracts.

Business Process Outsourcing

External Service Provider can reduce internal processing cost and provide access to additional saving opportunities. Some of those options are:

Commodity Outsourcing

Non strategic commodities are identified and transferred to an external service provider, who will negotiate and buy on behalf of the buying organization.

This allows reducing internal processing cost and can provide access to opportunities for low spend commodities. The service provider can combine the spend volume of such low spend commodities with volume from other clients to increase efficiency.

Assistant Buyers

Internal Process Cost can also be lowered by utilizing external processing services (e.g. Assistant Buyers). This allows reducing the processing time of the internal buyer. The additional capacity can reduce internal processing cost and allows the buyer to focus more on strategic buying.

Electronic Procurement

In many situations process costs can be higher than the actual costs of the procured good. Additionally the enforcement of corporate standards such as request authorization processes or no-PO-no-pay policies can be challenging.

Electronic Procurement is the very foundation of every optimization in this area. For example; spend content must be gathered first before it is possible to visualize and analyze it. Also the enforcement of processes (e.g. who needs to approve a request when) is easier and more robust when using an electronic procurement platform.

The minimum functionality of an electronic procurement solution is a request management and a catalog system. Each employee can easily request goods and services through such system, which are often web based to allow an easy access to the solution. Once submitted the purchase request runs through the automated authorization process and converts finally into a purchase order, which is send automatically to the supplier.

Electronic Invoicing

In many organizations the invoice process is disconnected to the request process. This can cause that even identifying the requester for the invoice can be challenging.

Without the right process and platform the related invoice processing cost can be unnecessarily high.

The main focus of electronic invoice solutions is to change the validation/ reconciliation process. Instead of all invoices, only those with exceptions should be manually managed. The procurement system can automatically validate invoices against the related contract, purchase order and goods receipt. Invoices with exceptions are automatically forwarded to defined individuals who can manage the exception process.

The manual entry of paper based invoices into the system can be outsourced to reduce processing cost. In a second step suppliers can be enabled to send invoices electronically to reduce cost further. Solutions exist to also allow small and midsized supplier to send invoices electronically.

Travel and Expense

Corporate Travel can be integrated within the procurement chain to benefit from cost reductions related to purchases and lower processing cost.

The Travel and Expense Process can be time consuming for employees and often provides little transparency into the actual procured goods and services.

Access to travel spend information can be utilized to negotiate better contracts, consolidate spend and benefit from discounts.

Some Examples are

• Hotel spend can be consolidated and better rates negotiated.
• At locations with sufficient taxi spend a contract with a local taxi company can be negotiated.
• Flights can be booked, also for external employees, through the internal travel desk to benefit from corporate programs (collecting points for free flights next to the air miles the employee collects).
• Cost for agreed internal and external travel can be paid directly with the corporate credit card to benefit from 1-2% cash back.
• ...

The travel and expense report process can be integrated within the electronic procurement platform to reduce processing cost and provide transparency. To reduce processing time further, users can automatically pre-fill the travel and expense reports by importing credit card statements.

Nitor Partners is a management consulting firm which aligns with leading organizations to provide complete spend management solutions. Their breadth of Ariba knowledge provides clients insight and ideas to improve spend management processes, implement technology and generate cost savings that are aligned toward strategic objectives.

Flexible Global Coverage

Global Service Availibility

Syondo SRL is a company registered in Cluj-Napoca/ Romania. Our team provides since 2006 independent advice and consultancy services to help mid and large sized corporations to leverage potentials within the Source to Pay Chain.

LinkedIn Company Page: www.linkedin.com/company/syondo