RS helps ACCIONA to digitise its management processes

With more than 500 plants and facilities in Spain, the purchase expense process was quite pronounced, representing a very high management cost. The purchasing department only concentrates its activity on purchases with a unit value greater than €6,000 or with the possibility of grouping.

The purchasing department set the objective of achieving savings in the spending process of more than 7%. However this was proving difficult considering there was no procurement process for low value, adhoc consumables as Marta Arias, ACCIONA's Water Line Purchasing Manager points out "We made purchases on the fly, which made it very difficult to achieve any savings, especially since you do not consider when you buy something that it is worth €12 or even less, that the effort can cost more than the possible savings."

ACCIONA decided to act in a double line to try to reduce the purchase expense queue and rationalise it; first, by delegating purchases of lower value items to the plants and, second, looking for the best way to group purchases through the implementation of solutions that allow value generation. Through PROCUR-e, a platform that takes advantage of the synergies of a transversal purchasing model, and with “ACCIONA Connect”, which facilitates the creation of electronic catalogues by improving management with suppliers, ACCIONA has taken steps in its digitisation and rationalisation.

In this new strategy, RS has played a key role. The company’s extensive digital experience in the development and configuration of punchout catalogues, the breadth of its offer, both in manufacturers and in references, and the ease of integration with third-party platforms, encouraged ACCIONA to carry out a test that was widely satisfactory, and that it helped the company launch its strategy in the digitisation of purchases in this segment.

In just 20 days, ACCIONA could already offer its plants and purchasing managers the possibility of accessing the RS online catalogue, through PROCUR-e.

“Thanks to the incorporation of punchout catalogues, such as those initially offered by RS for electrical material and hardware, and which we have subsequently expanded to include its entire offer, at ACCIONA we have achieved direct savings of more than one million euros” recognizes Arias.

Additionally, the savings for ACCIONA have also been achieved due to a change in the processes. “By digitising purchases, we have reduced the average cost per operation by 70%,” says Marta Arias. “This was a very important point that we took into account when preparing our business case.”