Our relationship
An offshore drilling contractor with operations on six continents was experiencing ongoing extreme delays in the procurement of goods and services. This created payment processing challenges and high transaction costs to issue purchase orders and process invoices for payment.
The company’s COO asked Protiviti, Robert Half’s global consulting subsidiary, to help develop a holistic solution and fix the problem once and for all.
Opportunity
The client was aware that its procurement challenges stemmed from inefficiencies across its entire P2P process, plus delays and bottlenecks within its heavily customized ERP system.
The company needed a strategic alliance with broad experience to help transform its procurement, receiving, accounts payable and payment and accounting processes, and improve poor master data.
Strategic approach
The Protiviti team conducted an eight-week assessment of the entire end-to-end sourcing process to understand dependencies and document challenges. Based on its findings, the team developed a multiphased strategy to address needed improvements and enable cost-saving tools and capabilities.
Solutions
Phase 1: Addressed vendor master data problems, improved efficiency and automation of P2P processing, and redefined the organizational structure and responsibilities
Phase 2: Developed a strategic sourcing methodology, implemented supporting technology, and conducted sourcing events to deliver sustainable and significant cost savings
Organized the new P2P function under a single owner to create clear responsibility and accountability for the process
Technology-driven innovation
Robotic process automation (RPA) and electronic data interchange (EDI) helped eliminate manual efforts, duplicative data entry and rework
Cloud-based tools helped visualize and analyze spend while speeding up and automating procurement activities (RFPs)
Results
Our Phase 1 focus on master data integrity, process automation and a target operating model to enhance the structure, governance and roles within the supply chain organization helped enable the powerful sourcing capabilities and tools that assisted the company in achieving significant cost savings.
One of the keys to success in this transformation was early and unwavering support from company management, which recognized the need for change and put its full backing into every phase of the project.
Resistance to change can be one of the biggest obstacles to achieving transformation. By embracing change in this case, management increased the chances of a positive outcome and contributed to the project’s ultimate success.
