During this week's SAP Spend Connect Live event in Vienna, Sales Layer had the pleasure of sharing a public keynote with a high-level guest: our customer, ACCIONA, a construction and energy group with 11 billion in sales and 45K people on their team worldwide.
Marta Arias, Senior Procurement Manager for the water cycle in ACCIONA's Water Division, took the stage alongside Chris Foti, Head of Alliances & Partnerships at Sales Layer, to share ACCIONA's success story and analyse their journey in digitising procurement and increasing buyer compliance by accelerating and enriching catalogue content. What an exciting journey it has been, akin to a Verne adventure!
ACCIONA has two major divisions, Energy and Infrastructure, and several minor ones for services like shared mobility and facility services. The Water Cycle, where Marta Arias leads the procurement processes, focuses on infrastructure related to water, such as water cycle operation plans, desalination, water treatment, sanitation services, and more.
Digitalization is imperative for a large company like ACCIONA, which needs to meet tight project deadlines and comply with regulations. They had previously implemented Jaggaer and an ERP, initiating the development of e-catalogs through hosted and PunchOut in the water division in 2019.
However, this process took an average of 2 to 3 months to implement an e-catalog. They ended up with only 20 companies involved in the digitization project, and no more were interested or prepared to participate, resulting in a low success rate and the digitization project being in jeopardy. They needed more participation, especially from smaller companies. That's when they discovered Sales Layer, and everything changed.
From 15K in sales to 1.5 million with Sales Layer Connect
In 2020, ACCIONA and Sales Layer agreed to develop ACCIONA Connect, a joint project that made replicating e-catalogs easy and cost-effective for all involved, including smaller companies. This approach allowed them to implement 20 more catalogues in a very short time and increase their success rate.
Since using Sales Layer Connect for the e-catalogs, suppliers’ sales have skyrocketed, with extraordinary examples like one supplier’s increase of sales from €15K to €1.5 million.
The Connect project has brought the following benefits to ACCIONA:
- Adherence has increased to 92%, as end-users find it very easy to search the catalogues that comply with all ACCIONA standards.
- 7 times better management of expenses, while before Connect they could only track only ⅛ of the company's expenses.
- Catalogue implementation between 20 minutes and 2 weeks, depending on the number of articles a supplier needs to include.
- Immediate purchases and shorter delivery times compared to 2 months average before.
- Faster response from suppliers, as they can make all changes through Connect simultaneously when requested, without the need for intermediate contacts.
- Goals achieved rapidly within 2 years, resulting in happier supplier and buyer relationships.
- Increased savings in direct and operational costs, with fewer people handling more tasks and providing higher-quality service to users.
- All invoices with purchase order (PO), while some were missing before.
- Enhanced assurance and compliance, with full visibility of the entire procurement cycle.
ACCIONA is immensely proud and pleased to be a pioneer in the digitalization of procurement, with Sales Layer's instrumental role in implementing Connect.
Now, your company can achieve this level of success too, as Sales Layer is the leader in catalogues and supplier enablement, helping teams create rich, sustainable catalogues in SAP Ariba in just 2 weeks.
Contact us now for a free trial or a personalised demo with one of our specialists who will thoroughly analyse your company's needs.
