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Explore how disparate sources and types of supply chain and operations data were digitally soldered to create a single pane of glass for a large-scale, cross-functional business-to-business (B2B) service delivery operation.

Read how inefficient swivel chair operations and manual business processes were transformed into an automated Held Order Tracking System, enabling significant cycle time improvements.

Product orders are sent to ‘hold’ due to processing issues within the supply chain. These held orders are a key cause of delayed shipments and subsequent customer dissatisfaction. Therefore, it is imperative that companies be able to identify, qualify, and resolve such orders in a manner as timely as possible. Additionally, it is crucial to remove the root causes of orders being flagged for a hold to reduce the likelihood of preventable repeats and improve order fulfillment performance.

This case study explores how Phoenix Innovations enabled one of their clients to improve performance within their primary order fulfillment supplier’s operations through an automated held order tracking system.

The Challenge: Decrease Held Order Frequency & Resolution Time

The client’s goal was to reduce the frequency and cycle time of held orders processed by their order fulfillment supplier, but they’d have to overcome several challenges to accomplish this:

• Orders were managed through a suboptimal email process that entailed multiple stakeholders and fractured communications.
• The process to qualify hold reasons was overly complex and counterproductive.
• Held orders were ineffectively reported and tracked.
• KPIs were nearly impossible to measure and trend, hindering efforts to establish and maintain responsibility and accountability.

An overhaul of their methods and procedures to manage held orders was required, and a digital transformation solution would become the instrument to deliver the results they desired.

One of the large clients of Phoenix holds a strong market position in the United States of America as a leading telecommunication and peripheral services provider. Through their services, the company generates millions of dollars’ worth of revenue every day and offer high-quality services to its customers, which are both individual and organizations.

Phoenix collaborated with the client to address their Tail Spend challenges, focusing on identifying and capturing potential savings often overlooked due to lower individual transaction values. By zooming into the tail spend, Phoenix aimed to provide actionable insights and recommendations to effectively manage costs, supplier relationships, and compliance.

Tail Spend

Tail Spend refers to the significant volumes of procurement transactions which although represent a small portion of total expenditure, but collectively add up to a significant amount. These purchases typically fall into the bottom 20% of the expenditure and involve numerous small-scale supplier purchases.

Tail Spend Management involves identifying and optimizing these transactions to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and mitigate risks. Through tail spend management, organizations can unlock potential savings and enhance overall procurement performance by gaining better visibility into spendings and implementing strategies such as supplier consolidation and process standardization.

The Challenge: Increase Visibility into Tail Spend

Phoenix began with identifying the key areas that represented a significant portion of procurement spending. Findings of the study revealed that the lower transaction values of tail spending often led to overlooked savings. Based upon the findings, the following areas of improvement were identified:

1. Risks of unmanaged tail spend
2. Loss of cost-saving opportunities
3. Lack of product quality control
4. Potential compliance issues, especially in regulated industries
5. Loss of productivity due to avoidable transactions

Phoenix proposed a tail spend management portal into the existing spend analytics solution to track and manage tail spends, effectively generating a tool to make tail spend management efficient for the client.

The Challenge: Build a Reliable, User-Friendly Spend Analytics Platform

A Fortune 50 telecom company’s goal was to develop a customized web-based Spend Analytics solution that would enable them to optimize their multibillion-dollar procurement expenditures through timely visibility and relevant data insights. However, the company experienced several significant challenges with prior outsourcing initiatives that hindered their ability to realize their goals.

When they approached Phoenix for a solution to their problem, the developers and project management teams identified some key challenges:

1. Feature development cycle times were too long.
2. Spend data was not reliable, which severely reduced user adoption rates.
3. Website designs provided a poor user experience (UX).
4. System support was cumbersome and inadequate.

With a separate largescale Supply Chain Management (SCM) Analytics solution already providing customer delight to the telecom company, Phoenix was again entrusted to deliver a new Spend Analytics solution that would meet and exceed their expectations.