A global, science-led biopharmaceutical business that creates innovative medicines which are used by millions of patients worldwide.
Challenges
AstraZeneca was looking to standardize and centralize their purchase to pay process. Previously, one person would have to generate a purchase order in their Ariba System, and then another person would have to manually duplicate that PO in their SAP system. This process was wasting resources and increasing the time needed to receive vital production materials. Also, this manual process would occasionally lead to lost or wrongfully entered POs, which would then lead to invoices not being able to be processed correctly in SAP. This in turn was causing AZ to lose millions in shipping and receiving costs.
The Solution
Akvarr helped AstraZeneca’s to retool their purchase to pay system by interfacing their Ariba system with their SAP system so that POs created in Ariba were automatically created in real time in SAP. Also, since AZ does business in dozens of different countries, we had to implement a global wide mapping system in SAP for the vendor management department. By arranging regular workshops and stakeholder meetings, we ensured that this SAP solution worked globally across all AZ locations.
Result
With this new streamlined system, AstraZeneca noticed faster and easier purchase to pay cycles, saving time spent and recourses used. Productivity increased and the cost of management resources needed for purchase to pay cycle cut in half, and time to receive materials decreased by 17%.
