Global Requirement Bundling with the click of a Button

Vienna | Lippstadt, April 10th, 2014 – Today the firm HELLA is currently bundling their global requirements, resulting in improved bargaining power for price inquiries. The purchasing solution POOL4TOOL creates a single pool of information from more than ten ERP systems through data harmonization. With the click of a button, the consolidated data view is shown to the automotive supplier. With a significant increase in performance, the purchasing department now has more time to concentrate on core tasks.

In global business, central pooling of demands and the associated coordination has become an immensely complex process, especially if a company, such as HELLA, which has approximately 100 locations worldwide, has to direct and control purchasing for development centers, field offices, and production centers. Requirement bundling is a task that is not feasible without the assistance of IT automation. The previous IT tool that was used for coordination processes was soon unable to cope with the increase in diversification. “POOL4TOOL designed and developed a new and fully customized tool to meet our needs. Today Purchasing can operate globally, we can effectively bundle demands, and we can send targeted inquiries to suppliers and manufacturers. We can now return our focus to our core processes,” explains Joachim Ziethen, Director Series Purchasing Electronics, HELLA KGaA Hueck & Co.

Summaries with the Click of a Button

The IT specialists designed and developed a new and completely custom application using HELLA’s awards database, that brought the management of demands and Purchasing to a new level. The demands are registered in the SAP ERP system, and the POOL4TOOL awards database, acting as a point of intersection, gathers the data from the SAP system and from non-SAP locations that are not directly connected to the platform. Purchasing is directed from the company’s headquarters. Which materials need to be procured, and in which regions, is determined after examining the data. The new tool is used for global categories in particular. The requirements bundling provides an improved negotiating position for the buyer. An overview of all of the demands can be called up easily with a simple click. In addition, HELLA can make the entire RFQ process more efficient by going through the portal, and can make them globally available in keeping with local demands.

Increased Performance Turns Focus to Main Objective

The new developments needed to combine supply base data from ten SAP systems. This included not only the master data, but also all releases that were listed for a supplier or manufacturer. This posed the considerable challenge of creating a unified database from ten different sources. Performance also had to be reengineered because the data in question was mass data. The new tool allows 200 RFQ’s to be created in 15 minutes.
This saves a considerable amount of time that would have been spent on gathering data, adjusting standards, entering data into the system, and analyzing it for plausibility. These tasks previously would have taken up 70% of an employee’s work time. By streamlining the administrative process, the Purchasing team at HELLA is given more time to concentrate on their core task: negotiate competitive prices for the product components.
The solution provider POOL4TOOL recently recognized the global demand pooling of HELLA with a specially designed POOL4TOOL Vision Excellence Award. "The award is given to customer projects, which are characterized by a high degree of innovation. We admire the pioneering done by our customers, who together with us work on development projects," remarks Thomas Dieringer, Chief Executive of POOL4TOOL AG.

About HELLA: HELLA is a global independent family-owned company with more than 29,000 employees in more than 100 locations in more than 35 countries. HELLA develops and manufactures components and systems of lighting engineering and electronics for the automotive industry, and has one of the largest trade organizations for automobile parts, fixtures, diagnostics and services in Europe at their disposal. Complete vehicle models, heating and cooling systems, and on board power suppliers are also created in joint venture companies. More than 5,500 employees are working in research and development, which makes HELLA an important innovator in the market. www.hella.com

About POOL4TOOL: POOL4TOOL is a cloud-based supply chain and procurement solution suite for connecting business partners across the value chain. With POOL4TOOL, companies can implement a single, natively integrated suite to support multiple internal processes and communicate with suppliers. The portfolio includes software solutions for over 40 processes, including supplier relationship management, sourcing, supply base management, supply chain management, eCollaboration, quality control, and product costing (PLC). With more than 10 years of experience in the manufacturing industry, POOL4TOOL’s solutions are tailored to support manufacturing procurement processes and requirements, e.g. sourcing of direct material, BOM, drawings, should cost model, and VMI functionality. Beside the headquarters in Vienna (Austria), the POOL4TOOL incorporation runs subsidiaries in Munich and Stuttgart (Germany), Paris (France), Detroit (USA), and Singapore. The company serves more than 200 international clients, i.e. Alcan, Behr, Carl Zeiss, Dürr, Kärcher, Miele, Modine, ThyssenKrupp, and Trumpf. www.pool4tool.com

POOL4TOOL AG
Altmannsdorfer Straße 91, Top 19
A-1120 Wien

This release was published on openPR.