Background
Hoyer Group is a global leader in providing specialist bulk logistics for the chemical, petroleum, food and gas industries. Established in 1946 as an independent family run business, the company prides itself, and invests heavily, in development. Globally the Hoyer Group employs 6,000 people in over 115 countries, turning over $1.2bn.
Purchasing is done through a central Procurement team. There were numerous projects across the Group, of different sizes, that required the sourcing and purchasing of goods and services, but the Procurement team had limited visibility of these projects.
Objectives
Hoyer Group required consistency, to ensure that sourcing projects were always run in the same way, whether it was to do with the questions that needed to be asked of suppliers or the scoring criteria. “It was our aim to be able to run the same statistics for a number of our sourcing projects in order to show how effective they are. Essentially, our procurement processes were not written out in a way that we could follow them systematically across the business.”
The company identified that a new solution was needed so carried out a market landscape. Proactis stood out due to its experience of Source-to-Contract implementations, and the ability to satisfy Hoyer’s need for flexibility in the planning and customisation processes.
How Proactis helps
Hoyer selected Proactis Source-to-Contract, including Supplier Management, Sourcing and Contract Management, to achieve its digital transformation goals - to create a consistent, transparent, compliant processes. Proactis helped Philipp and his team with the project through workshops and by translating complex processes into flexible, system-supported workflows.
“The Proactis solutions have streamlined many of our projects,” stated Philipp. “To carry out one of our equipment sourcing processes usually takes months, and many man-hours, but using Proactis means we can do it in two weeks and be in complete control from start to finish. One project has helped us achieve at least another 3% additional savings, while giving us complete visibility.”
The solution has also ensured that Hoyer employees purchase from authorised suppliers, usually at agreed rates. “In this way, the Proactis solution has given power to the employee purchasing the item. They know they are getting the equipment they need from approved sources. It also helps with supplier relationships and development and we are able to rate each supplier. For example, whether they are over-priced or the contract terms aren’t correct. The suppliers also have visibility, through the platform.”
Benefits
“We now have one point of reference for all sourcing project-related information, such as contacts, tender documents, standard library documents, specifications, rating schemes and offer documents. This is important to the Group as it helps guarantee a high level of quality tender and supplier interaction. This, in turn, generally improves pricing, quality and supplier relationships, and also vastly helps with compliance. We can now control and document our processes systematically through our template and through the solutions functionality.”
The improved transparency and compliance through systematic and standardised sourcing templates, including scoring/weighting and approval functionalities, has enabled the Group to follow a much more consistent path for all procurement projects.
After only a couple of months the Group has achieved additional savings generated due to improved supplier performance. A much more stringent process is in place, helping to keep track of approvals, decision making criteria and historic documents, and this has already shown efficiency increases when needing to check back on historic documents.
“During one of our project meetings,” concluded Philipp, “it was stated that this was the lowest price we’d ever achieved on a particular category.”