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Whereas in the past, each operating department took care of its own procurement
requirements, since about one year, purchasing at Skandia Versicherung Management &
Service GmbH has been operating as a centralized unit. Thomas Kremling, Purchasing
Manager for Goods and Services at Skandia reports about the methods and results and
describes what will happen in future.
The German Skandia subsidiary, founded in 1991 in Berlin, has established
itself in Germany as a specialist for innovative retirement and financial planning solutions.
With its comprehensive product line of investment-based individual solution concepts that address
customer needs in all phases of life, Skandia feels that it is optimally positioned for further
growth.
Skandia also focuses on innovation and efficient processes. Under
Kremling’s leadership, the purchasing agents bundle the procurement requirements and utilize
the fairpartners procurement platform in more and more categories. Whether printed materials,
general office supplies and equipment or services such as translations are involved, the
operating departments have, up to now, always been satisfied with the quality and benefit
from the frequently surprisingly significant cost savings that amount to between 20 and 40
percent.
Today, the operating and purchasing departments work closely together.
"Even during the tendering process, the operating department always remains involved on
the basis of the mutually formulated requirements. The operating departments especially
appreciate the personal contact with bidders during the procurement of services. That's
why a shortlist of bidders and recommendations made by the Purchasing Department is always
an important interim result of the tendering process. A well thought-through and succinctly
formulated call for bids ensures that offers are comparable and forces bidders to bid
according to specification. This increases the transparency of bids and the competition,
especially in connection with a procurement platform," reports Kremling. "Normally, the
operating and purchasing departments make the final decision for a bidder together."
"Our procurement process offers lots of freedom for an intense dialogue
with suppliers, particularly because the basic communication in connection with tenders
is handled Internet-based via fairpartners. And new ideas develop especially in connection
with an open circle of bidders," explains Kremling. "Within the framework of a Request for
Information, we were looking for suggestions for incentive trips and received an offer via
fairpartners.com from an agency that had been unknown to us up to that time. With the
positive result that the incentive turned out differently than originally planned but was
conducted with great success. We liked the innovative proposed solution of the new agency
right away."
"The bundling of the procurement requirements of the operating
departments intrinsically offers significant cost savings potential. In addition, using
fairpartners also maximizes auditing acceptability and transparency, and we greatly reduce
our administrative expenses," according to Kremling. "In the meantime, we route new bidders
at the point of first contact using the fairpartners platform. Our Request for Innovation
is intended to get to know new bidders without much administrative effort and to explore
their product offerings. The system bundles information about products and services and
creative proposals according to procurement categories that are made available on the
platform."
The new concept works. As the next step, Thomas Kremling plans to
bundle suitable procurement needs together with the Skandia subsidiaries in Poland,
Austria and Switzerland at the end of 2009 and to conduct consolidated procurement thereof
via a tendering process at fairpartners. Thomas Kremling: "We expect to be able to realize
significant cost savings while maintaining at least the same quality level through the
larger procurement quantities and the even wider international circle of bidders."
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