Award-winning digitization at Brose

The Brose Group has received the Intelligent Spend Management Award from SAP and management consultancy Roland Berger for a company-wide digitalization project. In the final round in Vienna, the automotive supplier beat out nine other finalists to become the overall winner. The award-winning project analyzes a wide range of information from components, such as raw material prices, and makes their changes transparent. This facilitates negotiations with suppliers and customers.

The innovative solution has been in use at Brose since last year by more than 700 employees in purchasing, sales and controlling. They benefit from a single data source of considerable size: the connected database processes more than 150,000 price changes a year for around 40.000 part numbers from more than 1,400 production material suppliers. These changes can be displayed in real time, which ensures greater transparency and confidence in customer negotiations.

This example illustrates how the role of our purchasers is changing: In addition to their traditional role as procurers, they generate added value for the company with their data, thus strengthening Brose's competitiveness. Last but not least, the award is also a recognition of the successful teamwork between IT, Sales and Purchasing in implementing the system, emphasizes Sven Erber, Senior Vice President Purchasing Brose Group.

In the future, the database's range of functions is to be expanded to cover for example sustainability aspects. Thanks to comprehensive emissions data, the CO2 footprint of purchased parts can then be transferred to end products and potential for improvement can be easier to identify.

The ISM Award is regarded as an important distinction for digitization projects in procurement and is presented annually by the management consultancy Roland Berger together with SAP. The expert jury includes purchasing managers, industry experts, university representatives and journalists.