GEP drives greater collaboration and visibility for WBA

Supply chains today are more complex than ever before. Transparency and collaboration are key to supply chains’ future in order to get the right footing in a more vulnerable and uncertain environment. 

For 10 years, Paul Blake has worked for GEP; today, he is the senior director of engagement. Blake explains: “Our approach to working with our customers in this kind of environment is multifaceted. Firstly, we help our customers define what a 21st century modern supply chain should look like.”

He adds: “After setting that baseline, we work to gain the insights that an organisation needs to navigate an increasingly complex supply chain, identifying risks and the dependencies that are able to make a difference. Next, we track the results before moving on to the final stage – taking action and changing the supply chain.”

GEP does this by consulting with organisations and providing the technology platform that gives organisations the means to have command and control over the system. “Fundamentally, it’s about data and interpreting that data into intelligence that an organisation can use,” says Blake. 

Driving sustainable practices in line with the SDGs

To be able to align the day-to-day tasks with the higher-level goals and commitments to ESG is incredibly important. “But there is a tension that exists within organisations,” says Blake. 

He adds: “While at board-level, organisations set admirable goals, they are yet to filter down into the organisation. The solution? To make small adjustments to the day-to-day process without having to reinvent the wheel and that, together, meet those important sustainability commitments.

“At GEP, we bring information to the forefront with intelligent solutions to ensure that our customers make the right decisions when it comes to the suppliers that they work with.” 

GEP and its partnership with Walgreens Boots Alliance

Like many customers of GEP, Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) has an abundance of complexity within its operations and a legacy of handling a lot of information in different systems, as well as offline. 

“Where information has been digitised, it has been done in such a way that it is simply a repository, which makes it very difficult for an organisation to drive collaboration and visibility, two important factors for gaining greater value from procurement and supply chain,” says Blake. 

“With WBA we have provided a technology platform that allows them to achieve a single source of truth, a central system that allows multiple different project types, stakeholders, territories, and regions to collaborate with, within a single framework that can be continuously improved.

“So it’s about taking data from the company’s historical records of what has been spent on what and with whom, and then providing the means to analyse that data for opportunities. We also provide a system that allows those opportunities to be turned into actionable projects for forecasting and setting goals. Bringing together all this information into the GEP SMART provides organisations with greater visibility and brings contracts to life, rather than being a static document.”

With this implementation, GEP SOFTWARE provides a much greater coherence in the end-to-end process allowing collaboration between the different stakeholders within the procurement operation, with improved collaboration between procurement and the supply base, too.

READ THE WALGREENS BOOTS ALLIANCE REPORT HERE