Digital Value Navigator

For years, all supply chains and procurement departments have been under increasing pressure to automate their processes or digitize the exchange of documents. There is no question that such measures and investments are strategically necessary – but at the same time they also pose costly and technical challenges.

In our daily work, we see how difficult it can be for procurement departments to select valuable solutions from the now broad and sophisticated range of digital tools – and not least from the most diverse price models – and to determine their own development path.

And the automation of inefficient processes does not always bring the desired added value for the organization. It is often only after the introduction that it becomes apparent whether the investment in modern technologies really pays off.

An individually purchased and installed tendering software, for example, which is used for no more than a handful of requests per year, can certainly be described as a – quite expensive – gimmick. It hardly really serves to increase process efficiency, but is often an expression of a lack of orientation and may also serve as a fig leaf in the sense of „Digitization? Yes, of course we will take care of it.“

To spare our customers such nasty surprises, we have developed a systematic procedure for the individual determination of use-maximizing digitization solutions.

Together, we systematically determine resilient answers to the following questions to evaluate the actual fields of action and identify solution partners:

– What is the current level of digital maturity in the sub-processes of purchasing?

– Which sub-processes are the most valuable in terms of automation?

– Which solution is suitable for which processes?

– Does a „large“ solution make sense or is it perhaps more of a specialized tool that is implemented step by step?

– To what extent is the forthcoming investment still economical or how can the benefits of the solutions be assessed in monetary terms?

– Is there a comprehensive market overview of potential market partners, products and price models?

The initial goal is to identify activities in the internal processes that have a high repetitive character and take up (expensive) capacities and time. The next question is always how to eliminate these time wasters. By process optimization or by automation? Where would a tool be useful? How great is the benefit generated in terms of process efficiency and costs?

If the decision is made in favor of automation, the second inventory, the external one, is carried out. What solutions does the market offer – specialized individual solutions or comprehensive software solutions that are networked in themselves – can be found and evaluated.

With the Value Manager Digitization (VMD) we have developed a tool for evaluating the added value of process digitization. Independent of solution providers, it combines the aspects of stocktaking, optimization approaches and necessary investment decisions. Based on our wealth of experience, a digitization roadmap based on the VMD can be created in a short time, which is individually tailored to your goals and requirements.

Tim Rohweder

Partner, ADCONIA GmbH (Oberhausen, Germany)