Ermewa: Digitising Source-to-Contract Operations
Ermewa is a leading European freight wagon rental company, and a major player in railway leasing.
According to the ‘2023 Global Railcar Leasing Market SWOT Analysis’ by DataDrivenInsights, the global railcar leasing market is continuing to expand.
The market was valued at US$106,12m in 2022 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 7.14% to reach a valuation of US$160,54m by 2028.
With growing demand Ermewa has made moves to enhance the efficiency and robustness of its procurement strategy.
One facet of this is its successful digitisation of Source-to-Contract operations through the help of Ivalua, a global leader in spend management, and partner CKS Consulting.
Ermewa: jumping on the Ivalua wagon
Founded in 1956 and based in France, Ermewa is a prominent freight wagon rental provider in Europe.
With a network of 18 offices across 14 European countries, Ermewa offers a fleet of over 47,000 railcars to industrial companies, railway undertakings, and freight forwarders.
These railcars transport a variety of goods, including hazardous and non-hazardous liquids, gases, bulk materials, and general cargo, such as food and non-food products.
Ermewa is a subsidiary of Streem, a major player in the global freight railcar and tank container leasing industry.
To streamline its procurement processes, Ermewa chose Ivalua’s Source-to-Contract (S2C) solution, which includes Supplier Information Management, Sourcing, and Contract Lifecycle Management.
With the assistance of CKS Consulting, Ermewa implemented Ivalua's platform using standard best practices tailored to their industry-specific needs, without requiring any coding.
“CKS has provided critical support to Ermewa in design decisions and built a solution meeting end-to-end business needs,” says Pierre-Edouard Labbé, Partner at CKS who heads up the project.
“Ivalua’s high configurability, leveraged through the Design mode functionality, supported building a module dedicated to the management and technical acceptance of wagons by Ermewa.
“Our close collaboration with Ermewa was instrumental to the success of the project as it enabled us to align on requirements to take into consideration prior to implementation and to identify opportunities for future enhancements,”
Taking the less-travelled track
Ivalua research has found that a majority of organisations have digitised only 48% of their procurement processes, a rise of a measly 3% since 2019.
Ermewa is challenging this and leading by example, successfully implementing Ivalua’s S2C solution to digitise its procurement processes and reduce its supply chain risk.
The successful implementation, led by CKS Consulting, allowed Ermewa to unify its procurement processes from end to end, meeting all business needs within a single platform.
Through this Ermewa has been able to consolidate its reporting processes, seeing user adoption rise due to Ivalua’s intuitive interface and localisation capabilities.
“Moving from fragmented data in Excel to Ivalua as a single source of truth has proven to be a good choice.” said Philippe Roussely, Purchasing Director at Ermewa.
“We are extremely satisfied by the ability of our implementation partner to adapt to our business environment and create a unique solution fit for us,”
"Combining Ivalua's unmatched flexibility with the expertise of our partner CKS, we have proudly delivered a solution that successfully addresses all of Ermewa’s requirements, enabling them to effectively digitalize their procurement processes,” concludes Dan Amzallag, Ivalua’s Chief Operating Officer.
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