Through its strategic tail spend management, WNS Procurement is delivering significant value for Merck KGaA’ s procurement function

Aaron McMillan

Editor Procurement Magazine

WNS Procurement has been working with pharmaceutical giant Merck KGaA for nearly six years, delivering a comprehensive tail spend management programme that has handled around US $ 1bn in spend to date. Through its support, it has delivered a foundation for business operations and driven significant bottom-line impact.

Addressing complex procurement challenges

WNS Procurement has supported Merck KGaA, alongside other Global 2000 and Fortune 500 clients, throughout its growth, managing ~$ 1 billion in total spend over the years( approximately $ 200 million annually).

But with a constantly-growing operation come plenty of procurement challenges.

Mita Gupta, Executive Vice President and Global Business Unit Head at WNS Procurement, explains:“ It’ s a large company, which has completed several acquisitions, leading to numerous ERP systems, creating silos across the business.”

This fragmentation was creating visibility issues and supplier proliferation that caught the attention of Merck KGaA’ s leadership. Its CFO was being forced to contend with data scattered across multiple systems and a supplier base expanded well beyond industry benchmarks relative to their spending levels.

It became the procurement function’ s mission to optimise the supplier base, while addressing additional pain points including lengthy procurement cycle times and a sub-optimal user experience that affected efficiency across the organisation.