Balancing collaboration and BU-independence while driving centralized sourcing in a GCC conglomerate

Context:

Multiple successful businesses within the parent company – each run independently and successfully.  Consequently, there was limited coordination between companies even when they were buying similar categories from similar vendors, leaving considerable value on the table  

What did we do?

• Integrated spend data across ERP environments, to establish spend transparency 
• Prioritized 15 of 50 categories for deep-dive assessment
• Ran an “RFP-factory”. Formulated 20+ RFPs to be shared with over 150+ suppliers including new ones
• Built should-cost models, mounted road-shows for new source countries
• Designed a business led central operating model for the organization to sustain impact
• Adopted category-specific negotiation approaches ranging from win-win collaborative approach for strategic categories to reverse auctions for tactical categories

What was achieved?

Reimagined a new way of sourcing for ~15 categories with cost savings of 5-10% across BUs