Edilians, a leading manufacturer of clay tiles, manages 95% of its orders on the Proactis purchasing platform

Executive overview

Profile

Sectorr
Construction

Number of supplier catalogs
45

Number of orders
15,000+ per year

Client since
2013

 

Objectives

  • Create a purchasing platform (marketplace) to manage purchase order management.
  • More control of the management of product catalogs and user settings.
  • Manage the maximum number of purchase orders for direct or indirect goods, services and benefits.
  • Digitize and automate the Procure-to-Pay process as much as possible, with complete security (approval workflow, order archiving, reporting, etc).
  • Multi-site procurement management.

How the solution helped

  • A single platform to access internal and supplier catalogs.
  • More transparency and efficiency in purchasing processes.
  • More autonomy and flexibility for administrators and users of the platform.

Benefits

  • Saves time and efficiency for buyers and users.
  • Quick learning curve and easy adoption by users.
  • Increase in the volume of spending under control and reduction of off-contract purchases.
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Profile

With more than 1,100 employees and 14 factories, Edilians is the leading manufacturer and marketer of clay tiles in France. The Edilians group came from the merger of several major players in tile manufacturing and has seen its scope expand following the successive arrival of new brands.

The Edilians group (formerly known as Imerys Toiture) first set up market place in 2005. Faced with market trends and the company's growth, it wanted to review the solution it was using and consider potential new solutions with the aim of making not only economic gains, but also gains in terms of use (tool flexibility and versatility). In 2013, the Purchasing department launched a project to identify a new order and purchase request management solution. Edilians chose Proactis particularly for its ability to establish a private marketplace, for the quality of the user interface and the flexibility in terms of configuration and monitoring, all at a competitive price.

Objectives

Edilians' objective was to find a tool that could manage all types of catalogs (supplier catalogs, internal catalogs or punch-outs) and manage purchase orders and receptions, in order to give users access to the products and services negotiated by the Purchasing department.

The rapid replacement of the old solution with the transfer of information from one tool to another and the interfacing of the new solution with the ERP system in place were essential for Edilians' Purchasing department.

Finally, the rapid adoption of this new solution by the greatest number of users was a major challenge for the company. Edilians wanted to offer more autonomy, flexibility and control to the administrators of the solution.

How the solution helped

With Proactis, users have access to the online ordering platform and can place orders directly from catalogs of referenced suppliers. The Purchasing department – the administrators of the tool – at Edilians can manage their own catalogs and have at their disposal a set of product references with the corresponding prices.

Edilians now uses Proactis for the majority (95%) of its 15,000 orders per year, with a few exceptions managed directly in the ERP system. Orders and receipts, which are also validated in the solution, are automatically integrated into the ERP, which then allows for financial follow-up. Proactis makes it possible to manage orders and receptions at each of Edilians' sites, which is made up of 17 organizations in total, each of which can accommodate customized settings in terms of validation, additional fields, number of users, etc.

"The Proactis suite offers a great deal of autonomy to the administrator, which is not necessarily the case in all marketplaces," said Emmanuelle Guinet, Category Buyer at Edilians. "The platform is very flexible and administrators can bring the tool to life easily and quickly. Since the suite is very intuitive, users have been quick to learn and adopt it."

Benefits

Proactis followed the whole project from the implementation of the solution to the production launch, including administrator training and user support, with a dedicated Project Manager for the configuration of the tool. Edilians' suppliers also benefited from support during the on-boarding of their catalogs. The support department continues to support users of the solution when needed and responds quickly to their requests.

Solution administrators have gained a lot of autonomy thanks to the Proactis solution. They can respond to user requests more quickly, simply and without necessarily requiring the intervention of Proactis services (creation of new users, change of approval workflow, modification of parameters, addition of prices to the catalog, etc.). The solution is very intuitive and easy to set up, enabling quick adoption by users, and the Proactis suite evolves regularly and new functionalities are regularly proposed.
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