Conference on purchasing finance – Profit potential through purchasing intelligence
Prof. Dr. Stephan Wagner and Dr. Alwin Locker organized, kicked-off, and moderated a conference on purchasing intelligence with procure.ch – the Swiss association for purchasing and supply management.
By digitizing processes, large amounts of data are generated in purchasing and supply chain management. This data can be augmented with unstructured data from other sources, such as the Internet. Buying firms can use this data to realize a competitive advantage and increase profit.
In their introductory presentation, Dr. Alwin Locker, CEO of external pageSoltar AG, emphasized that the digital transformation of purchasing and supply management will substantially speed up in the next 2-3 years, and Prof. Dr. Stephan M. Wagner elaborated in his presentation that buying firms and the purchasing function must consider and integrate with the customer’s ecosystem, as well as the supplier, technology and people ecosystems.
Firms like Axpo, SAP Ariba, Schindler, Swisscom, or Zimmer Biomet presented a number of projects, solutions and best practices how to digitalize procurement and how to leverage data in supplier management, sourcing, or the procure-to-pay process. Solutions ranged from catalog systems, “guided buying”, spend analysis or analytics to robotic process automation or process mining.
The purchasing finance conference was held for the fifth time, and organized by external pageprocure.ch – the Swiss association for purchasing and supply management.