Transparency in purchasing - Across national borders

After all, to what extent are delivery networks transparent across several stages of the value chain, what information about direct and indirect suppliers is already available in the network? As soon as suppliers or products cannot be clearly identified due to linguistic and systemic barriers, the management of these requirements becomes difficult and responsibility becomes a risk.

Lingemann can help you monitor your cross-border purchasing.

Production-relevant and/or strategically important suppliers are often only given appropriate attention due to the value of the business relationship or the increasing risk of production downtime. In contrast, suppliers of indirect goods or services are less of a focus, they are often not taken into account in risk management. It is precisely this lack of transparency that leads to a lack of comparability of cost centers and cost types between the locations. It follows that effective budgeting, which should also be in reasonable relation to factors such as production volume, number of employees, etc., is not carried out. In case of doubt, each production site plans the costs for itself and uses the previous year's figure as a basis for orientation.

It was an ambitious task to implement the large scope of purchasing activities with effective and cross-border control within the group. Events such as merchandise management systems that did not communicate with one another, different languages and currencies, different legal systems as well as heterogeneous cultures and customs posed great challenges for everyone involved.

In the future, the focus should be on consistent standardization.

It is important to note that implementing a cross-border procurement and supply strategy requires a long-term strategic approach. Short-term successes can hardly justify the effort at the beginning. In contrast, however, the potential for savings in the medium and long term is immense.

By working with Lingemann, our customer was able to overcome numerous hurdles and significantly reduce his costs.