GE Goes Live with Supply Information Management in Largest Software-as-a-service Deployment
Company taps Aravo SIM solution to automate and streamline supplier information-related business processes globally across business units; 500,000 suppliers, six languages, 10 countries
Posted: October 31st, 2008 01:14 PM GMT-05:00
By Editorial Staff
San Francisco, CA – October 31, 2008 – GE is working to transform its global supplier information management (SIM) process by deploying what is quite possibly one of the largest software-as-a-service deployments to date, using the Web-based SIM solution from Aravo to automate and streamline supplier information-related business processes across all of its business units worldwide.
The Aravo SIM solution, which forms the basis of GE’s Global Supplier Library, offers the company’s suppliers a self-service interface to author and maintain information required to do business with GE at both the corporate and business-unit levels, helping both GE and its suppliers increase efficiencies, improve supplier data quality, drive compliance and reduce costs.
Most Complex Supply Chain
GE manages what is arguably one of the world’s most complex supply chains, conducting business with over 500,000 suppliers across thousands of entities in more than 100 countries. The Global Procurement Group manages GE’s Global Supplier Library, a centralized repository at the corporate level for the management of supplier information feeding the firm’s multiple downstream business units.
The GSL was implemented in the 1990s to improve cross-enterprise coordination of supplier definitions, supplier reference numbers, supplier content and supporting data/documentation. The company needed to make process improvements to reduce a proliferation of vendors, improve visibility into the company-wide spend, aggregate supplier information and create a better understanding of what was being purchased from whom.
GE also wanted to more accurately track compliance, certifications, white papers and contracts. An overriding requirement was to make all of this data easy to find from within a universally accessible central repository on a global basis and in a consistent way. Supplier data quality also was an issue, as the legacy process did not provide a consistent means to validate and enrich the data as they came into the company during supplier onboarding and thereafter.
Controlling Complexity
GE sought to control this all this complexity with a Web-based software solution that was highly configurable and easily adopted by users. After considering internal alternatives and reviewing external options, GE determined that Aravo SIM was the best fit for its global needs.
The implementation of Aravo SIM began in March 2008 and is now live globally. The initial implementation phase supports GE’s corporate supplier management organization and will be rolled out to all GE business units by year end. Additional phases are planned for 2009. The Aravo platform at GE ties back into the company’s 15 instances of Oracle’s procurement solution.
“We evaluated a number of alternatives for managing our suppliers and their information, but Aravo SIM was the best commercially-available solution capable of meeting our complex, global needs,” said Gary Reiner, senior vice president and chief information officer of GE. “We are now managing over 500,000 suppliers and their data in Aravo SIM and have just gone live in six languages with suppliers around the world.”
Reiner said that GE expects the solution will deliver significant cost savings while improving data accuracy, compliance and productivity.
Increasing Data Accuracy
The supplier-facing interface with Aravo SIM offers six different languages, including Chinese and Japanese, while the internal, GE-facing interface currently is only in English (although Aravo offers multi-language options for this side of the solution as well).
To increase data accuracy within the supplier information management process, Aravo integrates with external data providers like ChoicePoint and Dun & Bradstreet. Now, when a new supplier is invited into the GE system, the Aravo solution performs a corporate background check on the supplier.
“Aravo SIM has enabled GE to streamline supplier management processes and employ a best practices-based methodology that ensures around-the-clock, global access to accurate, validated and approved supplier information,” said Aravo CEO Tim Albinson. “GE’s suppliers also reap significant benefits because Aravo SIM provides them with an intuitive interface to manage ongoing information flows.”
Strong Vendor Management Discipline
Industry analysts have noted that rapid implementation and ease-of-use are hallmarks of Aravo SIM. The solution is deployable out-of-the-box and delivered on a Web-based, SaaS platform, allowing complex supplier management projects to be rapidly planned and implemented using only a Web browser.
The platform’s dashboards, best-practice workflows and automated task management features enabled GE to quickly achieve their supplier management goals in a cost-effective and efficient manner, according to Aravo. In addition, the solution allowed GE to create, configure and launch a new set of firm-wide supplier enablement and management processes that offer task-level information and visibility to all global users via role-based dashboards and alerts.
“Our sourcing and compliance strategies require our employees to see 500,000 vendors with a common view across hundreds of global systems,” explained Tom Hattier, manager of GE’s Corporate Initiatives Group – Shared Sourcing Services. “Coordination requires strong vendor management discipline, both lean and simple, backed up by a global platform that can lock in the process. Aravo SIM met these requirements extremely well.”
Hattier added that the solution provides GE with a globally accessible application for the management of critical information around its supply base. “The service allows us to syndicate the information to our various purchasing, accounts payable and other systems so that we can have one consolidated view of what’s going on with all of our suppliers,” he said.
The implementation with GE could wind up helping other Aravo customers, according to Jon Bovit, vice president of strategy at Aravo. Bovit said that during the deployment at GE, the solution provider wound up building a number of new features into its base platform to accommodate a customer the size of GE. Because Aravo operates off a single code base for all its implementations, other clients would be able to take advantage of those features.
Related Links
Visit S&DCExec daily for the latest industry news, commentary, features and more.
» Click Here to Print This Page «
December 18, 2008 by robmayer · Leave a CommentFiled under: Companies, SaaS, Uncategorized
