Ivalua NOW: Dietmar Hauser, CPO at TÜV SÜD

Dietmar Hauser, Chief Procurement Officer at TÜV SÜD, spoke at Ivalua NOW 2026 about the digital transformation of a global leader with 160 years of heritage. Tasked with managing over 3,000 services and a complex, fragmented supply chain, Dietmar details why the organisation bypassed traditional implementation partners to manage their Ivalua integration in-house. 

By fostering a direct, agile partnership and sending teams to India for bespoke software optimisation, TÜV SÜD has successfully synchronised its global source-to-pay processes. 

Dietmar highlights how this collaboration has birthed innovative tools for risk management and carbon footprint tracking, redefining strategic procurement.

Tell us about TÜV SÜD and your role there

When people say, ‘What is the purpose of TÜV SÜD?’ People look at me, you know, we have 160 years of history, founded in 1866 in the south of Germany, and our purpose is really to protect the environment, people and assets from the negative impact of technology.

How have you partnered with Ivalua, and what that brings to you?

Our product portfolio is more than 3,000 different services and products we are running globally. And now comes the procurement in, and we have to manage all these thousands of suppliers because we have small, small, small supply chains. That’s actually where the need comes from, to have a really good platform to manage strategic procurement and operational procurement, and that’s how we started interacting in 2021.

We went out for tender. We were looking at possible platforms we can use end-to-end. It means one process for the whole world, that was the challenge. And then we had the final bidding in November 2021, and Ivalua convinced us with the customer experience, the surveys, how they set up the software and their flexibility to adapt to our needs.

What are some of the challenges in that source-to-pay landscape that you wouldn't have been able to deal with if it wasn't for Ivalua?

First of all, what I really liked was that Ivalua, first of all, had a different start with Ivalua than normal customers. We did everything in-house. So, I have a dedicated team, a governance team and we had a direct contract with Ivalua. That means no implementation partner.

It was a completely different approach because today you see all the implementation partners here, but we did 90% of everything we did on our own. We created such a spirit together.. I even sent my guys to India to do optimisation in the software. This flexibility and personal attention from the top management of Ivalua made us so successful.

Due to the fact that Ivalua is adapting to our needs, today they’re even selling software applications where we have together invented the way to do, for example, "Supplier Selection File," where you document the whole supplier tendering process, including risk management, carbon footprint, everything, in one process flow globally.