Volkswagen Global Shared Procurement System (VGSPS) is a system used to manage its procurement process currently outsourced to different vendors. The system is completely custom built and automated for high user-availability. The ability to import older procurement details, reports and analyses was also incorporated.
Problem
Volkswagen was facing issues managing outsourced vendors. Their old method of managing vendors was inefficient because they lacked a centralized tool to manage contracts, payments and the procurement process. It was difficult for them to evaluate total costs involved or how to obtain reports on the process itself. Furthermore, there was no easy way of tracking down cash flow in the system.
The Objectives
- Develop a custom tool to solve procurement issues faced by Volkswagen.
- Tool should be REST API compatible.
- Automation to retrieve network information from CRAMER.
- Adapt to high-availability with the ability to be scalable when required.
- Develop and integrate web GUI for the procurement tool.
- Develop a reporting and analysis module to assist stakeholders in tracking procurement process and progress.
Our Proposal
Volkswagen's Procurement and Outsource team were evaluating the procurement progress and funding manually using Excel spreadsheets. This requires a lot of hard work with potential human error while evaluating proposals and deliveries.
With previous success, we have developed solutions to help businesses stay ahead of customer satisfaction trends. We proposed to Volkswagen an automatic procurement tool implemented globally across all continents. First, the proposed tool would have an automated network information retrieval from CRAMER to achieve distribution, scaling and backup of the system. Second, the tool would be developed so that other services could be integrated with minimal effort using existing programming standards. Lastly, we proposed to develop a tool on top of a REST API system, thereby making the UI platform independent and horizontally scalable.
Overall, the proposed tool would lift the burden of manual procurement process management, offering a more efficient, accurate, and cost-saving solution for Volkswagen. We would then provide training and support for the new solution to ensure Volkswagen’s staff could ramp-up quickly in order to recognize the new system's full potential.