We recently released a Generative AI Digital Assistant for a client's Procurement & Sourcing function. This initiative, launched alongside the emergence of ChatGPT and OpenAI's Large Language Models (LLMs). Embracing a culture of continuous improvement and knowledge sharing, we're keen to share insights gained for organisations on a similar journey to unlock operational efficiencies with the technology.
Strategic Planning for Digital Transformation
Broadening Understanding through Education: The transformative potential of Generative AI became apparent to us following targeted education sessions. These sessions not only expanded our team's understanding but also sparked innovative approaches that were pivotal to our project's success.
Vision vs Reality: Early in our journey, we learned the critical balance between ambitious visions and the practicalities of current technologies. This balance helped maintain motivation and set realistic expectations throughout our team.
Valuing Domain Knowledge: Incorporating team members with specific domain expertise from the start was crucial. Their insights significantly enhanced the digital assistant's relevance and effectiveness, proving indispensable to our strategy.
Architecting Solutions with Foresight
Collaboration with IT: Seamless integration and navigating the complexities of large-scale deployment were made possible by early and ongoing collaboration with the IT department, a testament to the importance of tech partnership.
Selecting the Right LLM Model: Our decision-making process around LLM models was meticulous, focusing on long-term success by considering factors such as cost, scalability, and privacy.
A Commitment to Data Privacy: From inception, data privacy was a cornerstone of our development, ensuring our digital assistant was both secure and compliant.
Scalability as a Priority: Initial capacity issues served as a valuable lesson in designing for scalability, preparing us for future growth without performance compromise.
Designing with the User in Mind
User-Centric Design: Our design philosophy centred on integrating the digital assistant seamlessly into existing workflows, ensuring it delivered tangible value and enhanced daily operations.
Optimising Channel Selection: The choice to pivot from MS Teams to a bespoke UI was driven by the need for greater flexibility and the desire to provide an optimised user experience, underlining the importance of adaptable channel strategies.
Ensuring Data Integrity: Significant efforts were dedicated to refining data quality, a foundational step that guaranteed the assistant's responses were both accurate and relevant.
Addressing Genuine Needs: By focusing on solving real-world problems, we ensured that our digital assistant delivered impactful solutions, enhancing its practical value.
Beyond Text-Based Interaction: Recognising the potential of multi-modal interactions early on allowed us to enrich the user experience, setting the stage for future innovations.
Development, Testing, and Beyond
Innovative and Practical Use Cases: Striking the right balance between practical applications and innovative possibilities was key to demonstrating our digital assistant's current and future capabilities.
A Diverse Skill Set: The success of our development process was largely due to a multi-disciplined team, emphasising the importance of a holistic approach to AI system construction.
Comprehensive Testing: Rigorous testing phases were crucial in identifying and refining the imperfections in LLMs, highlighting the need for iterative improvement.
Adapting to Model Limitations: Understanding and adapting to the limitations of our chosen LLM model was essential for tailoring our development approach and setting realistic project expectations.
Creativity in Responses: Adjusting the level of creativity in the digital assistant's responses to suit each task was vital for achieving optimal outcomes.
Ensuring Sustained Success
Keeping Pace with OpenAI: The challenges we faced following OpenAI updates underscored the importance of staying informed and adaptable.
Technological Vigilance: In a rapidly evolving tech landscape, staying abreast of advancements was crucial to maintaining the cutting-edge status of our digital assistant.
Leveraging User Feedback: Post-launch, integrating user feedback mechanisms has been instrumental in the continuous refinement and enhancement of our digital assistant.
Conclusion
As the journey of developing our Generative AI/LLM-powered digital assistant unfolds, it's evident that many organisations are on the cusp of exploring the transformative potential of this technology. Generative AI is revolutionising how we access and interact with information, offering unprecedented efficiency gains. These advancements not only improve operational processes but also enhance decision-making and strategic planning, marking a new era of real-time, efficient, and personalised business operations.
Client Information:
The client was a leading Integrated Care System (ICS) within the NHS, renowned for its scale and complexity.
The Challenge:
The ICS had recently centralised its Procurement function across nine Trusts, revealing prospects to standardise and streamline business processes, thereby ensuring consistency and unlocking operational efficiencies. A key issue was the manual supplier onboarding process, which involved nine distinct process versions and set-up forms, conducted primarily via email and Word documents. At the back-end, variations in Finance systems and databases further complicated the process.
Our Task: Our objective was to design a future-state process and a transformation plan aimed at standardising the process, minimising rework and waste, and implementing automation and digitalisation, thereby reducing risk and enhancing compliance with EDI and sustainability standards.
Our Approach:
- Initiation: We developed a comprehensive project plan, a communication strategy, and a stakeholder engagement plan. Engagement at the Trust level was pivotal to ensure widespread buy-in. Utilising existing policies and processes, we created a detailed view of the current state and established project governance for effective oversight and communication.
- Current-State Assessment: We meticulously mapped the supplier onboarding process across the nine Trusts, identifying areas of waste, rework, and potential improvements. A detailed inventory of tools and systems used at each step was compiled to pinpoint digitalisation and integration possibilities. A RACI matrix was created to clarify roles and responsibilities across the Trusts.
- Future-State Design and Transformation Plan: We devised an interim future state, considering existing organisational and technological constraints. This included a digital front-end using low-code workflow solutions integrated with RPA for data input into Finance systems. We refined the onboarding form, focusing on EDI, sustainability, and eliminating redundant fields. Our end-state vision incorporated eProcurement, supplier master data management, and automated third-party checks. We then structured these changes into a transformation roadmap, aiming for iterative process maturity and benefit realisation.
The Outcome:
Identification of the following potential benefits:
- Identified a 50% reduction in time required for supplier onboarding.
- Opportunity to consolidate eight onboarding processes and forms into a single streamlined procedure.
- Calculated a 40% decrease in effort, allowing a shift towards more value-adding activities.
- Opportunity to transition from an Email & Word-based system to a more efficient, digitalised, and automated front-end.
- Enhanced visibility of onboarding performance metrics, including timeframes, volume, and instances of rework.
Introduction:
In today's fast-paced procurement and sourcing landscape, professionals are confronted with navigating economic inflation and stringent sustainability targets like the 2050 Net-Zero goal. Strategic cost management and responsible sourcing have become essential. The prevalence of operational inefficiencies, particularly the burden of administrative tasks, demands a more efficient approach. Enter Generative AI — the technological innovation poised to streamline procurement processes and empower teams to focus on strategic, value-added activities.
10 Generative AI Use Cases in Procurement and Sourcing for Strategic Efficiency:
- AI-Guided Business Negotiation:
- Use Case: Leverages AI for strategic recommendations during negotiations.
- Problem Solved: Enhances decision-making and negotiation outcomes.
- Capability: AI predictive analytics and intelligent recommendation engines.
- Contract Insight Extraction:
- Use Case: Utilises AI to mine contracts for critical business insights.
- Problem Solved: Accelerates risk assessment and uncovers hidden opportunities.
- Capability: Natural language processing (NLP) for deep text analysis.
- Spend Data Classification Automation:
- Use Case: Employs AI for precise categorisation of company spend data.
- Problem Solved: Eliminates manual errors and categorisation workload.
- Capability: Machine learning algorithms for data sorting.
- Efficient Contract Summarisation:
- Use Case: Summarises complex contracts for quick comprehension.
- Problem Solved: Provides rapid, actionable summaries for busy professionals.
- Capability: Advanced summarisation algorithms for critical content extraction.
- Vendor Communication Automation:
- Use Case: Generates tailored communication with vendors based on AI insights.
- Problem Solved: Ensures consistent and accurate vendor interactions.
- Capability: Contextual language generation for effective communication.
- Risk and Negotiation Point Analysis:
- Use Case: Identifies and highlights risks and negotiation points in contracts.
- Problem Solved: Strengthens contract positioning and risk mitigation strategies.
- Capability: AI-powered risk detection and negotiation intelligence.
- Streamlined Contract Creation:
- Use Case: AI-based generation of contracts from given terms and conditions.
- Problem Solved: Simplifies the legal drafting process, saving time and resources.
- Capability: Template-driven generation with AI customisation features.
- Inventory Level Insight Summarisation:
- Use Case: Offers concise overviews of inventory statuses.
- Problem Solved: Aids in inventory management and decision-making processes.
- Capability: Summarisation tools for inventory reporting.
- Procurement Policy Digital Assistant:
- Use Case: Provides instant policy guidance and procedural advice.
- Problem Solved: Ensures compliance and uniform understanding of procurement policies.
- Capability: AI-guided policy interpretation and workflow instructions.
- Contract Metadata Extraction:
- Use Case: Extracts and organises metadata from procurement contracts.
- Problem Solved: Enhances document management and data retrieval.
- Capability: Metadata extraction for efficient document indexing.
Conclusion:
Embracing Generative AI in procurement and sourcing is not just a trend — it's a strategic transformation. By adopting AI for contract management, data classification, and policy adherence, procurement teams can allocate more time to strategic cost management and sustainable sourcing initiatives. As AI evolves, it's poised to further enhance operational efficiency and align procurement practices with the broader goals of economic and environmental sustainability.
Introduction
Procurement and Finance leaders are increasingly under pressure to enhance operational efficiency and cut back on functional costs. The emergence of digital tools has heralded a new era for streamlined and automated Source-To-Pay processes. Leaders, therefore, must respond to ensure they retain their competitive edge and avoid talent attrition. Digital Transformation has transformed everything, presenting significant opportunities for large-scale automation. This implies a shift in the role of the procurement and finance professional, with broader implications for the procurement and finance operating models.
Whilst there is opportunity, the challenge lies in improving efficiency in a way that is sustainable.
Shifting buyer and procurement manager time to the things that matter
Ultimately, the objective for Procurement and Finance Leaders remains to free up time so that the transactional element of procurement is automated, allowing Procurement staff to concentrate on business partnering activity, relationship management, and strategic sourcing. To realise this, it is important to adopt a comprehensive and pragmatic approach to enhance operational efficiency and optimise operational costs.
Source-To-Pay Accelerator: A Pragmatic Approach to Procurement & Finance Improvement
The Hudson&Hayes Elevate | Procurement & Finance Accelerator offers a systematic and pragmatic approach to cost optimisation for procurement and finance leaders. It streamlines and automates processes, embraces digital innovation, and builds the foundations for sustainable change through improved operational management. This approach is adaptable to a single Source-To-Pay, Order-To-Cash or Record-To-Report process or an end-to-end approach, drawing on years of experience delivering procurement and finance transformation. A blend of Lean, Intelligent Automation, and Domain expertise enables an approach that helps to get the basics right and future-proof the delivery of services, all while ensuring deep knowledge of the intricacies and language of procurement and finance.
In this article we will explore the approach in detail and provide you with a step-by-step guide on how the approach is delivered.
Four Phases, underpinned by Capability Building and Agile Delivery
The Elevate Procurement & Finance Accelerator is delivered across four phases: Initiation, Iterative Discovery & Design, and Iterative Delivery, with a consistent focus on capability building. It aims to drive operational improvements across multiple improvement levers.
The approach is guided by five core principles
Holistic: Time savings are achieved through multiple improvement levers that span multiple components of the Procurement & Finance Operating Model.
Iterative: Design and delivery work are delivered in iterations to realise value early and frequently.
Scalable: The approach is adaptable, suitable for the end-to-end Source-To-Pay process, or for addressing single processes or pain points.
Tailored: It's customised to suit the Source-To-Pay, Record-To-Report and Order-To-Cash process and the procurement and finance function.
Sustainable: It fosters enduring change through consistent capability building.
Figure 1: Elevate | Procurement & Finance Accelerator Approach
Initiation: Setting Up for Success | 2 weeks
Getting clear on the problem to be solved
Understanding the specific problem to address is a crucial initial step. All efforts can then be channelled towards resolving it. A simplistic directive like 'cut costs' is inadequate. There needs to be a clear articulation of the problem and goal.
A viable problem statement requires an understanding of who is affected by the problem, what the problem is, where it occurs, and crucially, why it's worth solving. It might look something like this:
"Decrease operational procurement costs by 10% by the end of 2024 without compromising the customer experience."
Seeking the input of a chosen group of internal customers, as well as key customer and budget holder perspectives across all categories, enables us to understand the desires and requirements of the people who will be impacted by the initiative. This, in turn, facilitates the creation of a feasible problem and goal statement that addresses crucial stakeholder concerns.
Benchmarking performance
Benchmarking performance using industry-recognised benchmarks is indeed a sensible approach. When it comes to Procurement & Finance efficiency, one commonly used metric is the Cost of Procurement / Finance as a percentage of revenue. For Procurement, Direct and indirect procurement costs as a percentage of revenue can fluctuate significantly, depending on the industry and the specific company. Here's a broad overview of how direct and indirect procurement costs may differ across various sectors:
Understanding procurement and finance costs as a percentage of revenue can be beneficial for companies to benchmark their performance against competitors, identify potential cost savings, and formulate strategies to enhance efficiency. Additionally, it can assist companies in understanding how their procurement processes measure up against industry norms, enabling informed decisions about resource allocation and investment.
| Industry |
Procurement Function Cost as % of Revenue |
Finance Function Cost as % of Revenue |
| Manufacturing |
1.5-3% |
1-2% |
| Retail |
0.8-1.7% |
1-2.5% |
| Healthcare |
1-2% |
2-3% |
| Technology |
0.7-1.5% |
1-2.5% |
| Energy |
1.2-2.5% |
1.5-3% |
| Construction |
1-3% |
2-3.5% |
| Services |
0.7-1.7% |
1.5-2.5% |
Example | Calculating Procurement as a % of revenue
Procurement costs as a percentage of revenue are typically calculated by dividing total procurement costs (direct and indirect) by the company's total revenue and then multiplying the result by 100 to obtain a percentage value.
Total Procurement Costs = Direct Procurement Costs + Indirect Procurement Costs
Procurement Costs as % of Revenue = (Total Procurement Costs / Total Revenue) * 100
Please note that these percentages are rough estimates and can vary depending on the size of the company, region, and market conditions.
Mobilsing a cross-functional Elevate Squad
The Elevate approach combines a varied set of skills to drive improvement. A squad is composed of individuals with a mix of Lean, Procurement Domain, Emerging Technology (including RPA and Artificial Intelligence), and S2P, R2R or O2C Technology Platform expertise. These teams manifest as the Elevate Squad. Each squad is self-organising, cross-functional, and consists of people from both your organisation and Hudson&Hayes. The squad's diverse nature ensures that you arrive at a design that lays the proper foundations for sustainable improvement while future-proofing with best-in-class technology.
Figure 2: Elevate | Procurement & Finance Accelerator Squad
Creating a Process Model to Attribute Cost and Time to
To begin, we'll tailor the S2P, R2R and/or O2C process model to fit your organisation, using it as a foundation to assign costs and time to. This model also helps bring a shared taxonomy, structure, and language to processes when discussing them with individuals across your business.
Figure 3: Elevate | Procurement & Finance Accelerator | S2P Process Framework
Figure 4: Elevate | Procurement & Finance Accelerator | R2R Process Framework
Figure 5: Elevate | Procurement & Finance Accelerator | O2C Process Framework
Iterative Discovery & Design | 12 weeks
Once the initiative is mobilised and performance baselined, it's time to progress into iterative discovery and design. This phase is carried out across 12-week cycles, divided into four-week design sprints.
Planning Discovery and Design Work
Selecting an Area of Focus
Instead of trying to tackle everything at once, you should concentrate on selecting a range of processes a value stream. The question of where to focus and where to start can be as much an art as it is a science, and may include any of the following decision criteria:
Benefit: Current Performance, Efficiency Opportunity, Cost Saving Opportunity
Ease of Implementation: Appetite for Change, Level of Technology Change required, Stakeholder Impact.
In some instances, where end-to-end transformation is the goal, you may decide to tackle the process from start to finish.
Figure 6: Elevate | Procurement & Finance Accelerator | Wave Scope Example
Baseline Operational Measures and success criteria
After benchmarking using holistic efficiency measures, a set of relevant baseline measures can be calculated. This provides a mix of lagging and leading performance measures to act upon. The diagram below presents an example list of measures across the source-to-pay process.
Figure 7: Elevate | Procurement & Finance Accelerator | S2P Measurement Framework
Human vs Data-Led Analysis
Discovery can be either human-led or data-led. To obtain real-time and real-world insights, the team can utilise process mining and task mining technologies. The combination of these approaches ensures appropriate engagement while using data to validate the viewpoints of those working on the processes daily. The choice of technology to be used will hinge on time constraints, the business's appetite for change, and whether existing technology is already in place. In the absence of process mining technology, a comprehensive assessment can still be completed, but it will be based on historical data
Conducting a 360 Discovery & Design | 12 weeks (6 weeks for a Pilot)
The Discovery & Design phase is conducted across multiple lenses to ensure a comprehensive design. A holistic assessment of the operating model will reveal numerous opportunities for operational efficiency. Approaches to capitalise on these opportunities should be considered with a view to resolving the problem statement established at the outset. To uncover opportunities to optimise source-to-pay, you should use multiple improvement levers. Combining traditional lean process improvement techniques to eliminate waste and re-work with various digital and automation capabilities can yield transformational results. Unearthing opportunities doesn't need to be complex - it merely involves asking the right questions.
Design Sprint 1: Customer & Process
Customer
Overview & Outcome: Addressing the customer lens involves adopting an outside-in perspective to understand the experience of budget holders and internal procurement customers when they engage with the procurement service.
Deliverables
- Service Customer Journey Map
- Demand Analysis
Improvement Levers
Shifting customers to lower-cost channels
For customer-facing processes, we will explore ways to guide customers and suppliers towards lower-cost channels such as self-serve platforms and ChatBots. The average Cost to Serve (CTS) for human channels can be significantly higher, and transitioning to digital channels can yield substantial operational efficiencies. By the end of this analysis, the distribution of volumes across each channel will be clear, and opportunities will be identified to guide customers towards lower-cost channels through a combination of short-term and longer-term interventions.
Process
Overview & Outcome:
The cost and value of the processes in scope can be determined by mapping each one end-to-end and capturing key process metrics such as process time, lead time, value-add time, re-work, and waste. This will provide a breakdown of where most of the work is currently allocated and a clear categorisation of each process. This analysis can be carried out at various levels. End-to-end process analysis at a macro level can be followed by analysis at a lower level. There may be processes that add value at high levels, yet non-value-add activities become apparent when the sub-processes are assessed.
Deliverables
- Process Maps
- Value Stream & Value Analysis
- Automation Opportunity List
Improvement Levers
Standarding processes | Is there one best way of carrying out this process today?
In many cases, the same procurement and finance processes are carried out differently across multiple business units, geographies, and categories. There are often opportunities to harmonise processes to reduce variation. We work with you to standardise processes and ensure there is a foundation for continuous improvement.
Simplification | How might we remove non-value-add activity and reduce waste and rework?
While this question will be familiar for any organisations that have embraced lean, it remains as relevant as ever. We worked with a large telecommunication company and found that the average time from the submission of an existing supplier work package to purchase order approval was 46 days. One of the key drivers was duplication of approvals and excessive approval cycle times. As a result, 95% of suppliers ended up working at risk without an approved purchase order. To address this, process simplification improvements were suggested and delivered which eliminated duplicate approvals.
Outsourcing or transition work to a low-cost location | Are there non-core / transactional S2P, R2R and O2C tasks which can be transitioned to a low-cost location
We will work with you to identify opportunities to transition work to a low-cost location. It is important for your organisation to question whether proximity to a centralised location is necessary. This approach typically works better for transactional procurement and Accounts Payable (AP) processes, rather than customer-facing processes or those with high complexity. Typical procurement and AP processes that may be suitable candidates for transition include invoice processing, purchase order management, vendor onboarding, and routine procurement activities. By assessing the nature of these processes, we can determine the feasibility and potential benefits of transitioning them to a low-cost location.
Robotic Process Automation | Is the organisation carrying out rules-based, repetitive activities?
We work with you to identify areas where Robotic Process Automation (RPA) may be relevant within your procurement and source-to-pay processes. By conducting a thorough analysis of your processes, we can pinpoint specific tasks and activities that are rules-based and transactional, making them suitable candidates for RPA implementation. You can leverage Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for activities that are rules-based and transactional in nature. RPA is well-suited for source-to-pay activities where there is no room for interpretation. Many companies still manually match invoices, purchase orders, and goods/services receipts, which often leads to time-consuming manual issue resolution, such as addressing mismatches between prices and quantities on purchase orders and invoices.
Document Extraction / Intelligent Document Processing | Are people manually entering data from unstructured documents?
We work with you to identify areas where Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) and document extraction technologies may be relevant within your procurement and source-to-pay processes. By conducting a thorough analysis of your document-intensive tasks, such as invoice processing and purchase order management, we can pinpoint specific areas where IDP can streamline operations.
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) technologies leverage advanced techniques like optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning to automate the extraction of key data from documents. This includes extracting relevant information from invoices, purchase orders, receipts, and other procurement-related documents. By automating the data extraction process, IDP eliminates manual data entry and reduces the risk of errors, resulting in improved accuracy and faster processing times.
Design Sprint 2: Technology & Data
Overview: Operational efficiencies can be delivered through the optimisation, simplification and enhancement of the application portfolio. For large complex organisations it is not uncommon for there to be duplicate technologies that serve the same business capability. During this sprint the team assess the technology landscape using a variety of tools.
Example Deliverables
- Application Blueprint
- Process to Application Matrix
- User story / Requirements List
Figure 8: Elevate | Procurement & Finance Accelerator | S2P Technology Landscape
Improvement Levers
Technology Rationalisation | Is there redundant or duplicative technology being used to deliver the S2P, R2R and O2C process?
As part of our analysis, we will assess the technology landscape to identify any redundant or duplicative technologies that are currently employed to support the process. This involves evaluating the various systems, platforms, and tools used across different stages of the S2P, R2R and O2C journey.
By identifying redundancies and duplications, we can determine areas where consolidation or elimination of technologies is feasible. This process aims to streamline the technology stack, reduce complexity, and optimize resource allocation. By eliminating redundant or duplicative technologies, you can simplify your IT infrastructure, improve system integration, and reduce maintenance costs.
Figure 9: Elevate | Procurement & Finance Accelerator | Process to Application Matrix | R2R Example
Enhance existing technology | How might we improve efficiency through increased functionality or capability in existing systems?
During our analysis, we often find untapped potential in existing platforms such as Coupa, SAP Ariba, SAP, and Workday. These platforms often offer a range of powerful features and capabilities that organisations may not fully utilise.
Our team will closely examine your existing platforms and identify areas where additional functionality or capability can be leveraged to drive efficiency gains. This may involve exploring advanced features, modules, or integrations that can enhance automation, streamline processes, and provide better insights into your procurement and finance operations.
Design Sprint 3: Organisational & People
Overview: Recognising the ever-changing landscape, we know that the future requires diverse and adaptive operating models. Through the Elevate methodology, we also help you create efficiencies and agility from improved organisational structure and people capability. We will work with you to focus on the potential brought about by technological disruptors that enable automation of low-value tasks, moving the workforce to higher-value activities like category innovation. For Procurement, the conventional category management model with managers tied to one category may soon become obsolete in some industries. Instead, flexible models that allow for the ramping up and down of specialist resources based on current needs, fostering a culture of adaptability and efficiency.
Potential Deliverables
- Target Agile Organisational Model
- Decision Making Rights Matrix
- Cultural Design
Improvement Levers
Organisational Structure | How can we adapt the structure to enable efficiency and agility?
We will assist you in designing a lean and appropriately sized procurement organization that is focused on delivering higher-value services. Our aim is to guide you towards optimal automation and establish an effective delivery model that aligns with your specific needs and objectives. By streamlining the organisational structure, you can achieve greater efficiency and agility in your procurement operations.
Simplifying Decision-making | How can we remove barriers to innovation and improvement?
We will provide support in simplifying governance and decision-making frameworks, ensuring that they are streamlined and aligned cross-functionally. By removing unnecessary complexities and empowering decision-makers, we enable a more agile and innovative approach to procurement. Our goal is to create an environment that encourages continuous improvement, fosters innovation, and facilitates the implementation of new ideas and best practices. Through this simplification process, you can overcome barriers that hinder progress and drive positive change within your procurement function.
Design Sprint 4: Measures & KPIs
Overview
Recognising the need for visibility and purposeful measures in procurement, we understand that many organisations lack adequate measurement frameworks and often focus on lagging indicators. In Design Sprint 4, our focus is to address this challenge by working with you to develop a comprehensive set of measures and key performance indicators (KPIs) that provide real-time analytics and visibility into your procurement processes. Our goal is to bring clarity and purpose to your measurement approach, enabling data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement.
Deliverables
- Purposeful Measures and KPI Framework
- Real-time Analytics and Visibility
Improvement Levers
Measurement Framework | How can we ensure measures and KPIs are aligned to strategy and drive continuous improvement
We will utilise our existing measurement framework as a starting point and customise it to your specific requirements. This framework will provide a structured approach to measure and monitor procurement performance, emphasising both leading and lagging indicators.
Capability Building
Underpinning the approach is consistent capability building. This includes ensuring there are Process Owners and Sub-Process Owners for all areas of the process and developing skills and capabilities in Lean and Intelligent Automation. Ultimately the goal is to create an enduring model that can be delivered and managed by you. To achieve this we leverage our learning and development offering. Each wave will include a cohort of people to train and coach and create self sufficiency.
Iterative Delivery
During the design phase, we will consistently transfer the identified optimiSation opportunities into the delivery process. Our focus is on unlocking value early and regularly, ensuring that initiatives are delivered in an iterative manner over the short, medium, or long term.
To effectively manage these initiatives, organizations may consider using an initiative "hopper" and Kanban approach. This enables leaders to make priority decisions and limits the number of initiatives in progress at any given time. By adopting this method, you can maintain focus, efficiently allocate resources, and ensure timely delivery of initiatives.
Throughout the design and delivery process, we will collaborate with you to determine the best approach for each initiative. Some initiatives may be led by our team, while others may receive our support or be driven directly by your business. Our goal is to ensure that the delivery of initiatives aligns with your priorities, capabilities, and desired outcomes.
By adopting an iterative and agile approach, we can unlock value early and frequently, delivering tangible results and driving continuous improvement. This allows you to realise the benefits of optimisation initiatives while maintaining flexibility and adaptability to changing circumstances.
An explicit business case should be developed for each initiative with its benefits, costs and measures for ease of implementation all specified.
Ensuring benefits are felt on the bottom line
We help you establish processes to ensure that cost-saving benefits are realised. This is especially true when the sought-after benefits pertain to productivity savings rather than direct cost savings.
For instance, decommissioning application licences can deliver immediate and evident cost benefits. However, when it comes to productivity savings, there are various options to consider and compare, ensuring that the improvements effectively impact the bottom line. Outsourcing, for example, can potentially increase overall costs unless accompanied by efficient redeployment of the resources originally used. Similarly, the automation of activities can only optimise costs if the freed-up resources are effectively utilised elsewhere.
We will set up regular cadence and iterations for delivery to establish commitment and regularity over time. Quarterly wave delivery is often a sensible cadence with fortnightly sprints used to maintain momentum.
Wave delivery also provides a structured approach for the change management activities needed to land each solution or change, e.g. training or communication.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Procurement and Finance leaders are facing increasing pressure to enhance operational efficiency and reduce functional costs. The emergence of digital tools has opened doors to streamlined and automated procurement and finance processes, requiring leaders to respond proactively to maintain a competitive edge and retain top talent. At Hudson&Hayes, we understand the challenges and offer the Elevate | Source-To-Pay Procurement & Finance Accelerator, a pragmatic and comprehensive approach to optimise procurement and finance operations.
With the Elevate | Source-To-Pay Procurement & Finance Accelerator, you can drive operational improvements, streamline processes, and future-proof their procurement and finance functions.
A New Imperative for Procurement and Finance Leaders in a Digital Age
As we enter an era of digital transformation, procurement and finance leaders are faced with the challenge of embracing new technologies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their source-to-pay processes. The adoption of automation tools presents a unique opportunity for organisations to revolutionise their procurement and financial operations, ultimately increasing their competitive advantage and enhancing their ability to attract and retain top talent. To truly reap the benefits of this digital revolution, organisations must move beyond simple task-based automation and workflow systems, harnessing the power of advanced cognitive capabilities for document processing and management.
The Pervasiveness of Documents in Our Lives
Documents form a crucial aspect of both our personal and professional lives, providing a means for communication, record-keeping, and decision-making. They can be categorised into three main types: structured, unstructured, and semi-structured. In the context of procurement and finance, organisations striving for end-to-end automation often grapple with the high volume of unstructured documents, which significantly limits their ability to scale their operations successfully. Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) offers a promising solution to this challenge, enabling organisations to extract valuable data from unstructured documents and paving the way for automation at scale.
Introducing Intelligent Document Processing: A Solution for Unstructured Document Challenges
Intelligent Document Processing represents the next generation of automation, allowing organisations to capture, extract, and process data from a wide variety of document formats. IDP utilises advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, such as natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, deep learning, and machine learning (ML), to classify, categorise, and extract relevant information from documents, as well as validate the accuracy of the extracted data.
IDP vs. OCR: A Comparative Analysis
Traditional Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technologies, as well as those integrated into Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platforms, often struggle with handling varied document formats, interpreting natural language, and dealing with distortion, ultimately resulting in lower accuracy and straight-through processing rates. IDP, on the other hand, combines the functionality of OCR with advanced techniques, such as NLP, ML, and AI, to analyse and comprehend the meaning of data contained within documents. This allows for a more accurate and complete understanding of the information, as compared to OCR alone.
Addressing the Limitations of Robotic Process Automation
Organisations that employ RPA as part of their automation journey may eventually find themselves facing a plateau in terms of the opportunities for further process improvement. While RPA is highly effective for executing task-based, rules-based processes, it has significant limitations when it comes to processing unstructured documents. IDP can help organisations overcome these limitations by extracting data from such documents and providing RPA bots with the necessary information to complete tasks. This is particularly relevant in the context of invoice processing, purchase order processing, and contract management within the source-to-pay process.
Use cases across Source-To-Pay
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) has numerous applications in procurement, including:
- Purchase Order Processing: IDP can be used to automate the processing of purchase orders, extracting key data such as order number, item description, quantity, and price from structured documents. This can reduce the manual effort required to process purchase orders, improve accuracy, and speed up the procurement cycle.
- Invoice Processing: IDP can be used to extract data from invoices, such as vendor information, purchase order number, invoice number, and line item details. This can automate the matching of invoices to purchase orders, reducing the risk of errors and delays in payment.
- Contract Management: IDP can be used to extract key data from contracts, such as contract start and end dates, payment terms, and termination clauses. This can help organisations to better manage their contracts, reduce the risk of non-compliance, and improve overall procurement efficiency.
- Vendor Onboarding: IDP can be used to automate the processing of vendor documents, extracting key information and populating it into the vendor management system. This can reduce the manual effort required for onboarding vendors, improve accuracy, and speed up the process.
- Supplier Performance Monitoring: IDP can be used to extract data from supplier performance reports, such as delivery times, quality metrics, and pricing information. This can help organisations to better monitor supplier performance, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions about supplier selection and contract renewals.
- Request for Proposal (RFP) Analysis: IDP can be used to analyse RFPs, extracting key information such as required qualifications, deliverables, and evaluation criteria. This can help procurement teams to better understand the requirements of the RFP and make informed decisions about which vendors to select.
- Supplier Risk Management: IDP can be used to extract data from supplier risk reports, such as financial data, credit ratings, and legal records. This can help organisations to better understand the risks associated with their suppliers and make data-driven decisions about supplier selection and risk mitigation strategies.
- Contract Review and Negotiation: IDP can be used to extract key information from contracts, such as payment terms, termination clauses, and deliverables. This can help legal and procurement teams to more quickly identify key issues in the contract and negotiate more effectively.
- Purchase Requisition Processing: IDP can be used to extract data from purchase requisitions, such as the item being requested, the quantity, and the requested delivery date. This can help procurement teams to more quickly process purchase requisitions and reduce the risk of errors.
- Compliance Monitoring: IDP can be used to extract data from documents such as contracts, invoices, and purchase orders to ensure that they comply with relevant regulations and policies.
Implementing IDP
Extracting data using Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) typically involves the following steps:
- Document Scanning and Uploading: The initial step in the IDP process involves scanning or uploading the document that requires processing. The document can be in paper or digital format, and can be uploaded directly into an IDP platform or sent via email.
- Document Classification: Once the document has been uploaded, the IDP system will automatically classify the document based on its content and structure. For example, the system may identify a document as an invoice, purchase order, or contract.
- Data Extraction: Once the document has been classified, the IDP system will extract data from the document based on pre-defined rules and machine learning algorithms. The data extraction process may involve identifying specific fields, such as the invoice number, date, and total amount, and extracting the data into structured formats.
- Data Validation: Once the data has been extracted, the IDP system will validate the accuracy of the extracted data against pre-defined business rules and algorithms. For example, the system may verify that the invoice number is valid and matches the vendor and purchase order.
- Data Integration: Once the data has been validated, it can be integrated with other systems and processes, such as accounts payable, procurement, or contract management. The IDP system may use APIs, web services, or other integration methods to ensure that the extracted data is seamlessly integrated with other systems.
- Reporting and Analytics: Once the data has been extracted and integrated, the IDP system can generate reports and provide analytics to help organizations better understand their document processes. For example, the system may generate reports on invoice processing times, contract compliance, or purchase order accuracy.
Leading vendors in the IDP space include Automation Anywhere, ABBYY, UiPath, Kofax, AntWorks and Blue Prism. These vendors offer comprehensive functionality and a wide range of features to help organizations implement IDP effectively. By utilizing solutions from these top vendors, businesses can achieve more efficient, accurate, and cost-effective document processing, which in turn leads to improved operational efficiency and better decision-making.
Taking a Holistic Approach
To fully capitalise on the advantages of IDP, it is essential to integrate the technology within a holistic strategy for process optimisation and intelligent automation. At Hudson&Hayes, we support our clients in identifying opportunities for IDP through our distinct process transformation methodology, called Elevate. Subsequently, we drive end-to-end implementation via our four-step intelligent automation approach, known as Harmonise.
In Summary
In summary, Chief Procurement Officers and Chief Finance Officers can gain substantial benefits by embracing IDP for Source to Pay processes, such as enhanced efficiency, accuracy, and cost savings. IDP facilitates the automation of routine tasks, minimises human errors, and accelerates decision-making. By adopting IDP, organisations can maintain a competitive edge, streamline processes, and bolster their financial performance.
Client Background
The client is a leading blue-chip manufacturing firm with a sizeable procurement department. They recognised that they were falling behind in digital transformation and intelligent automation capabilities, aiming to unlock efficiencies across procurement by optimising processes and employing emerging technology.
Challenge
The primary challenge faced by the client was identifying and prioritising areas of improvement within their procurement processes, discovering opportunities to implement emerging technology to maximise efficiency and value.
Hudson&Hayes' Approach
- Evaluating Automation Maturity: Hudson&Hayes initiated the process by assessing the client's current intelligent automation maturity level. While some automation processes existed, there were substantial opportunities to centralise delivery and globalise existing solutions.
- Educating the Business: Hudson&Hayes conducted a series of bite-sized education sessions for leadership and operational staff, providing a thorough understanding of intelligent automation technology. Through demonstrations and explanations, the client gained deep insight into potential applications and benefits.
- Developing the Opportunity Pipeline: A feasibility study was performed to create a pipeline of opportunities, which included suggestions from both Hudson&Hayes and the client's employees. Each opportunity was categorised based on the likely solution (standardisation, simplification, RPA, Intelligent Automation, or Data Analytics) and assessed for potential benefits and ease of implementation.
- Co-creating the Automation Roadmap: Hudson&Hayes facilitated roadmapping sessions with the client's Centre of Excellence (COE) to sequence opportunities over a 1-2 year period, prioritising benefits and stakeholder impact. The roadmap identified over 20,000 hours of saved time through the implementation of RPA, ChatBot, Low-Code, Process Optimisation, and Predictive Analytics.
Outcome
- A comprehensive 2-year automation roadmap significantly enhanced the client's automation capabilities within their procurement department.
- Identification of over 20,000 hours of saved time through process optimisation and the implementation of various technologies.
- Training of 34 members of the procurement team on intelligent automation, increasing their understanding of emerging technologies and their applications, leading to better decision-making and long-term efficiency improvements.
The Changing Role of Procurement
The shift towards innovation and value creation for procurement and function functions requires leaders to reimagine how work gets done across the source-to-pay value stream. In a post-COVID-19 world, procurement leaders are faced with fresh challenges as organisation prioritise reducing supplier risk and increase supply chain resilience. Procurement leaders will need to transform the procurement function and source-to-pay processes to become strategic enablers who improve competitive advantage.
Industry benchmarks suggest that organisations typically waste 3-4% of their overall spend on excessive transaction costs, inefficiency and non-compliance. This spend leakage is significant, and with revenues being squeezed across many industries, the need to address it has never been greater.
Understanding and adopting the proliferation of digital tools is no longer optional for procurement functions that want to be best in class. Despite this, adoption is slow.
Procurement departments are still in the early stages of adopting technologies such as robotic process automation. According to Gartner, only 8% of procurement teams are using RPA and 73% currently have no plans to adopt RPA at all.
Industry benchmarks suggest that organisations typically waste 3-4% of their overall spend on excessive transaction costs, inefficiency and non-compliance
What is Source-To-Pay?
Source-to-pay is a process that starts with sourcing, negotiating with and contracting the supplier of goods and ends with final payment of those goods. It is a large, complex process that cuts across procurement and finance functions.
Emerging technologies such as RPA and AI mean that over 50% of the source-to-pay process could be automated. Combined with other improvement levers such as process simplification, standardisation and outsourcing, a significant amount of time can be saved to free buyers to work on strategic category management, building and developing supplier relationships and managing supplier chain risk.
Figure 1: Source-To-Pay Process Framework
Which Levers? Simply Ask The Right Questions
To unearth opportunities to optimise source-to-pay, organisations should use multiple improvement levers. Combining traditional lean process improvement techniques to remove waste and re-work with various digital and automation capabilities can produce transformational results. Revealing opportunities doesn’t need to be complicated. It simply entails asking the right questions.
Simplification
How might we remove non-value-add activity and reduce waste and rework?
While this question will be familiar for any organisations that have embraced lean, it remains as relevant as ever. We worked with a large telecommunication company and found that the average time from the submission of an existing supplier work package to purchase order approval was 46 days. One of the key drivers was duplication of approvals and excessive approval cycle times. As a result, 95% of suppliers ended up working at risk without an approved purchase order. To address this, process simplification improvements were suggested and delivered which eliminated duplicate approvals.
Standardisation
Is there one best way of carrying out this process today?
In many cases, the same procurement processes are carried out differently across multiple business units, geographies and categories. There are often opportunities to harmonise processes to reduce variation. However, when it comes to category management, standardisation can deliver superior supply chain performance and cost savings by allowing procurement teams to leverage their spend across fewer manufacturers and maximize operational efficiency by managing fewer stock-keeping units.
Robotic Process Automation
Is the organisation carrying out rules-based, repetitive activities?
Robotic Process Automation lends itself to activities that are rules-based and transactional in nature. RPA is suited to source-to-pay activity in which there is no room for interpretation.
A typical RPA use case in source-to-pay:
A majority of companies continue to match invoices, purchase orders and goods/services receipts manually. This work is accompanied by manual resolution of issues like mismatches between the prices and quantities on POs and those on invoices. Automated matching bots can be employed earlier in the process and toward the front-end. Using intelligent character recognition and confidence intervals to automatically identify mismatches helps minimise the need for manual intervention and queries.
Intelligent Automation: Smart workflow
How might the workflow and key rules and decisions be digitalised and automated end-to-end?
Full end-to-end digitalisation of source-to-pay can be achieved with Smart Workflow, a process management software tool that sits between humans and digital capabilities such as RPA to manage the hand-offs and provide real-time visibility on status.
A typical Smart Workflow use case across source-to-pay:
Contract Management
Smart Workflow can be used to automatically scan contracts, extract terms, predict approvals and send remaining documents to procurement resources to process. The length of the whole contract review process can thus be reduced dramatically.
Intelligent Automation: Machine Learning
Are there outcomes that can be predicted using data?
With the right data, machine learning can be used to process tasks that involve more complex rules. By defining the inputs that enable predictions, organisations can automate tasks that would otherwise require human judgement.
Typical machine learning use cases in source-to-pay:
Supplier risk management
Procurement leaders can adopt machine learning to make predictions on supplier risk based on supplier stability and financial viability.
Invoice processing
Organisations are also using machine learning algorithms to match invoice data to the correct spend category, automatically sorting procurement spend into categories and sub-categories.
Intelligent Automation: Natural language processing
How might insights be derived from language translation, semantic understanding and text summarisation?
Natural language processing (NLP) is focused on understanding, interpreting and manipulating human language. For procurement, NLP can unlock insights from textual data. NLP entails applying algorithms to identify and extract the natural language rules such that the unstructured language data is converted into a form that computers can understand.
A typical NLP use case across source-to-pay:
Contract mining
Legal contracts contain valuable information for procurement, including payment terms, termination dates and re-negotiation rights.
Whereas contracts have previously been stored offline or in shared folders and thus not readily accessible to procurement teams, text parsing enables the contracts to be mined for the data. Optical character recognition enables text to be automatically identified within previously un-digitised images including photographs and scans of contracts.
Transition/outsource
Which processes or activities are non-core and don’t require proximity to the central team?
Offshoring or outsourcing of procurement processes remains a viable option to release capacity and reduce cost. Typically, transactional activity is the most obvious procurement process to outsource. This includes typical day-to-day buying activity such as reviewing and approving purchase orders. However, it’s also possible to achieve cost savings for more strategic buying activity such as the management of category groups that aren’t as closely managed. Typically, these are indirect categories.
In Summary
To increase business value from sourcing and procurement functions, organisations must go beyond foundational approaches. By accelerating digitalisation and combining various improvement levers, procurement leaders can thrive in the post-COVID-19 world.
In this webinar, we show you how to improve your procurement processes through Intelligent Automation.
Led by Hudson&Hayes’ own Founder and Managing Director, Arron Clarke, and our Strategic Advisor, Bilal Shaykh, we explore how to get started on your automation journey.
We cover key questions for selecting the right processes and opportunities to automate, how to combine multiple automation, and tools to maximise the value you can achieve.
You’ll also learn typical use cases that Hudson&Hayes has explored with our clients to achieve tangible benefits from technologies such as RPA, Workflow, Intelligent Document Capture and much more!
A problem that easily goes unnoticed
Procurement functions currently face an unprecedented range of disruptive forces. All parts of the supply chain have been affected by COVID-19 and its attendant impact on commodity prices and transportation. These have compounded the existing challenge of delivering value and cost savings.
Under these circumstances, it is beneficial for procurement and sourcing teams to be aware of the potential savings they could make by controlling and reducing their tail spend, i.e. the spending which is not currently strategically managed. Tail spend can easily go under-noticed as much of it occurs outside existing contracts and is typically composed of thousands of low-value transactions. The effect on the bottom line, however, is significant, as is the value that can be realised by monitoring and controlling tail spend.
Why tail spend should be confronted
Grasping the scale of this category of spending makes clear the potential benefits of addressing it. Typically being partly composed of many small transactions, it is common for tail spend to comprise the vast majority of the overall number of suppliers and to amount to between 10% and 30% of an organisation’s spend.
The inconsistent, spread-out nature of tail spend makes visibility and risk management challenging. Contract compliance becomes harder to ensure. The efficiency of procurement is diminished.
Tail spend comes in several forms
Large (and growing) amounts of spending can fall outside strategic management for a variety of reasons including the use of fragmented systems, dysfunctional internal stakeholder relationships, non-centralised procurement models and contracts and supplier onboarding processes that fail to capture all spending possibilities.
We can identify five distinct variants: supplier, category, business unit, number of transactions and location/site.
Supplier tail spend refers to the use of suppliers not covered by the spending strategy, either because they become suppliers after the strategy was established or because the spending with them is too low to be covered by it. Spend with non-contracted suppliers or suppliers used only once or very infrequently would also be included here.
Category tail spend encompasses spend in non-standard-specification categories or categories for which purchase order penetration tends to be low.
Business unit (or cost centre) tail spend includes spend occurring within particular business units which isn’t aligned with the organisation’s global procurement policies or doesn’t follow regular, prescribed procurement routes.
Transactional tail spend refers to spend falling below a specified minimum or contained in purchase orders which are non-catalogue or have insufficient order information.
Geographic tail spend refers to spending inconsistencies arising across different locations and sites. These include local spend that is not with prescribed suppliers, and spend which has been adapted ad-hoc to account for geographically-varying tax rules, legislation or business requirements, diverging from the prescribed global routes.
Recognising the warning signs
A tail spend problem can be detected by the presence of certain symptoms.
Among the most obvious of these is finding that a large proportion of orders (e.g. 30%+) aren’t negotiated by procurement. A very large number of transactions overall is also a warning sign, as is finding that only a minority of transactions are with preferred suppliers.
If the number of suppliers exceeds that of employees, it is likely that many of the suppliers fall outside the spend management strategy. Similarly, if a small minority of spend goes to a large majority of suppliers (e.g. 70% of the suppliers combined receiving less than 10% of total spend), this is a likely indicator of weak spend management. Rapid proliferation of suppliers (e.g. an increase of 10%+ per quarter) is also something to monitor for.
Other indicators include non-adherence to procurement policies. One form in which this occurs is purchases being made without using catalogues or other approved, regulated means. Organisations using more than one payment system will also tend to provide a fertile environment for tail spend to expand.
Identifying opportunities and implementing solutions
The solution will necessarily begin with obtaining and analysing the relevant data. This will bring greater visibility and enable the segmenting of spend by supplier, category, transaction, business unit/cost centre and geographic location.
Tail spend can then be classified into opportunity areas such as off-contract buying, spot buying, spend fragmentation and price variance. This makes it possible to determine the extent of spend which can be reduced or eliminated.
The next step is to prioritise categories by urgency and to identify opportunities for migrating spending into strategic suppliers. Appropriate sourcing levers can then be used. These will include sending RFIs and RFPs to suppliers, rationalising the use of suppliers and vendors, expanding and/or amending supplier contracts, aggregating spend where possible, and purchasing co-operatively through consortiums or e-marketplaces.
These measures will be complemented and secured by implementing standardised procurement policies and a governance structure designed to ensure compliance. This can include establishing a knowledgeable, dedicated spot buy team tasked with monitoring spend patterns and automating, managing and tendering purchases on behalf of other teams. The new set-up can also include the use of proprietary technologies to improve operating efficiency in purchasing and enhance the user experience for buyers.
Costs reduced and FTE released at a large automobile firm
A large US automobile company was missing major opportunities for cost optimisation due to a lack of focus on tail spend. In particular, spend was inflated by:
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a lack of standardised processes across locations
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multiple systems being used for purchase order management
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frequent buying of low-priced items in small numbers
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a huge number of suppliers
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high transaction volume for the accounts payable team
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the use of spend data that was incomplete or had no standard classification
Our consultant’s approach to resolving this began with:
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Conducting an opportunity assessment
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Collecting and collating data to qualify spend value by location, business unit and time frame
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Mapping relevant processes and defining what was in and out of scope
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Mapping and consulting stakeholders
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Outlining and recommending work packages
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Estimating the effort involved
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Presenting a business case to show the costs and benefits of addressing the problem
With the business case agreed, the solution involved:
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Implementing software for analysis and spend automation
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Introducing an improved end-to-end workflow
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Rationalising the supplier base by more than 50%
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Creating a spot buy desk for irregular or unpredicted purchases
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Optimising relevant processes to ensure value realisation
With the solution in place, the benefits for the client were:
Seizing the opportunity
Discovering the scale and causes of tail spend and bringing it under strategic management should be a high priority for organisations. Not only is there an opportunity to unlock significant amounts of value, but the measures employed to do so will bring improvements in operating efficiency and predictability. These gains would be worthwhile at the best of times, and are all the more so as procurement leaders face the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic at every link in supply chains.
We worked with a large automotive company on a purchasing transformation. A key objective was the transition to a new operating model that would differentiate between strategic buyers and transactional buyers.
A limiting factor was the inefficiency built into the company’s legacy model. Buyers were spending time on non-value-adding and non-differentiating activity. Rapid growth had compounded these issues.
In just 4 weeks our objective was to:
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Identify opportunities to shift buyer time away from non-value-adding and transactional-based activity
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Develop recommendations that yielded benefit to release at least 10% capacity across the purchasing function
The solution
We collaborated with a team of buyers to conduct an end-to-end process diagnostic. This included:
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Building capability through the delivery of Lean awareness training that educated the buyer community on key Lean principles, concepts and tools
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Identifying improvement opportunities through a 4-week diagnostic. We leveraged DILO (day-in-the-life-of) techniques to observe the actual work and distinguish between time spent on value-adding vs non-value-adding activity
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Developing a diagnostic report with solution work packages that unlocked benefits across multiple improvement levers e.g. Simplification, Automation via Robotic Process Automation and Outsourcing to a shared service centre.
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Designing a programme to deliver all identified improvement opportunities
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Ensuring each work package had a sponsor, delivery lead, and a clear path to delivery
The result
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FTE productivity benefits identified & validated
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Direct cost savings identified as a result of outsourcing and RPA opportunities
