SAP announced that Flint Group has centralized and digitalized its indirect materials and services procurement processes with SAP Ariba Solutions. And this has led to the company’s increase in efficiency, reduced costs and gained greater control over its spending.

In the aftermath, Flint Group’s guide procure-to-pay processes were replaced, since it required individual purchase orders for each supplier. Therefore, the company standardized its purchasing process enterprise-wide, which made buying, invoicing and accounting simpler and more understandable for employees, suppliers, managers and accounts payable.

“We have vastly improved our employees’ buying experience and process efficiency with our shift to the cloud and implementation of the SAP Ariba solutions,” said Arno de Groot, vice president, Procurement Packaging, Flint Group. “What’s more, with a complete unified procurement system, we have greater visibility into spend; enabling more informed buying decisions and a positive effect on our bottom line,” he added

SAP proclaimed that it has solved one of the most challenging facets of Flints’ business functions. The company explained that before executing SAP Ariba solutions, the Flint group’s indirect procurement was complex and prolonging and the lack of spend transparency and inconsistent data led to deficient view of costs and inability to make well-informed buying decisions. SAP further proclaims that with SAP Ariba solutions having integrated to SAP’s ERP application, Flint Group has been able to:

• Strengthen its employees by inducing intuitive user experience which helps make guided buying decisions as well as reducing maverick spend
• Perk up accounting accuracy, compliance, and its accounts payable process with a PO attached to nearly every invoice
• Reducing its vendor base, maximizing incentives and rebates while improving the supplier experience, by establishing an ideal supplier program
• Achieve visibility into existing stock, making it possible to avoid duplicate and unnecessary purchases

Flint functions in more than 130 centers across six continents, besides working with an enormous and diverse network of suppliers to deliver for its customers.