Initial Situation
- SEW-EURODRIVE wanted to test new technology and approaches to scout suppliers and make procurement a more significant value driver in the business.
- Since supplier scouting remains to be a time consuming process, SEW wanted to evaluate the potential benefits that would come with scoutbee’s AI-driven supplier scouting.
Objectives
- Finding the optimal suppliers for a specific battery system
- Only a few suppliers known to the company that were trusted enough to deliver this product reliably
- Aim to find a steady development partner in order to mitigate risk
The Solution
- scoutbee was able to identify 1885 potential suppliers for the requested material.
- After a first validation based on SEW’s criteria, scoutbee provided a longlist of 62 suppliers that could deliver on the company’s needs.
- SEW asked 11 suppliers to provide RFI feedback, and subsequently onboarded 6 of those suppliers for negotiations.
- The scoutbee solution delivered upon both the company’s efforts to digitize and to massively improve supply resilience and purchasing processes.
Benefiting From Smarter Supplier Discovery
When the leading German drive manufacturer SEW-EURODRIVE won the award “Excellence in E-Solutions” at the ceremony of the Federal Association of Purchasing in March 2020, it didn’t come as a big surprise for many insiders in the industry. As part of their digital transformation strategy, SEW had been putting a big focus on digitizing purchasing processes to establish procurement as a value driver in the organization.
“The digitalization strategy put in place by our executive board gives us the opportunity to test new disruptive technologies in procurement and their impact on our overall business,” said Angelika Bittner, responsible for SEW’s digital roadmap in purchasing. Through the use of scoutbee’s AI-driven supplier discovery, SEW was not only able to save money, resources and process costs, but also managed to win this award in the process, and therefore positioned itself as a digital pioneer in supply chain management and procurement.
Staying ahead of the curve with scoutbee
In fact, SEW has been a trailblazer in disrupting legacy workflows for years. With their initiative “Procurement 360° – see the big picture,” the company focuses on a number of different pillars, from maintaining healthy supply chains to digitizing and standardizing purchasing processes on a global scale.
With scoutbee, SEW could achieve both. Scouting new suppliers for 3 different product categories (battery systems, drives for automated guided vehicles and metal parts for roller bearings), the drive manufacturer wanted to pressure test what scoutbee’s AI was capable of doing.