Exide Industries: Transforming procurement with innovation and modernization to achieve greater agility and competitiveness
Digitalizing procurement to drive strategic value
As the largest manufacturer of storage batteries in India, Exide Industries Limited recognized that to continue to profitably grow and expand its business, it needed to optimize its disparate, manual-based procurement processes. Exide chose to implement SAP Ariba solutions and SAP Business Network to transform its procurement environment.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Industrial manufacturing | Kolkata, India | 5,100 employees |
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Head—SAP Solutions II Finance and IT, Exide Industries Limited
Optimizing discrete spend while improving productivity and supplier relations
With a reputation that is based on innovation, dependability, and trust, Exide Industries Limited is the largest manufacturer of lead-acid storage batteries and power storage solutions for automotive and industrial applications in India. For more than seven decades, the company has been one of India’s most reliable brands. Today, it has subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Sri Lanka, and it exports to 60 countries across six continents.
When the company’s operating costs began to exceed its revenue generation, Exide knew that it was time to optimize its outdated, discrete procurement processes. The company’s procurement operations in its nine manufacturing facilities in India were decentralized and lacked harmonization. In addition, the processes were people dependent, requiring high levels of human intervention that often resulted in duplication errors and increased turnaround times for orders. Besides poor data hygiene for supplier information, there was an absence of a global database for Exide’s vendors. This made it challenging to identify similar products from different vendors, measure supplier performance, and monitor contract compliance.
Exide wanted to build a modernized, integrated procurement environment that automated its sourcing, contract, and buying operations while improving order fulfillment times and providing visibility and tracking of orders, receipts, payments, and queries. The company also needed a system with supply chain functionality that allowed it to better communicate, collaborate, and negotiate with suppliers. It envisioned a system that included a supplier database to standardize product cost catalogs, improve access and categorization of supplier offerings, and optimize material planning and forecasting with suppliers. Additionally, Exide needed a way to generate intelligent reports, with dashboards for monitoring supplier performance globally, improving compliance, and increasing agility in decision-making.
With regard to employee productivity and accuracy, Exide knew that the automation of its procurement processes would improve authorization approvals and eliminate non-value-adding manual activities.
Chief Digital Officer, Exide Industries Limited
Escalating innovative procurement operations into a game-changing advantage
Exide Industries chose SAP Ariba solutions to enable digitalization of its procurement environment and procure-to-pay processes (see the figure). The company selected the SAP Ariba Sourcing solution to simplify and manage its sourcing, which is helping it automatically facilitate requests for information and request for proposals (RFPs). Its intuitive user interface helps Exide with indirect guided purchasing for specialty items. The SAP Ariba Contracts solution automates Exide’s contract management, including contract creation for sourcing negotiations and stand-alone contracts for specialty products.
Exide implemented SAP Ariba Supply Chain solutions to leverage AI-enabled supply chain management so it could better predict disruptions and respond with agility. The company also uses the solutions for post-PO collaboration processes, including payment updates for suppliers. The SAP Ariba Catalog solution is helping Exide digitalize product cost-sheet categories in a single, centralized procurement catalog.
The company is using SAP Business Network to enhance procurement and supply chain collaboration, raw materials sourcing and services, and connections with suppliers using a buyer and vendor portal. In addition, the SAP Business Network Commerce Automation solution is helping the company integrate its procurement process with SAP Business Network with greater operational efficiency. SAP Business Technology Platform provides a customized platform that automates the company’s notes for approval (NFA) process based on supplier bids.
SAP Ariba solutions are now integrated with SAP ERP Central Component, which helps expedite RFP and PO processing and approvals.
Head—SAP Solutions II Finance and IT, Exide Industries Limited
Driving greater cost savings through automation and optimization
Today, Exide has a modernized procurement environment that has transformed the way its 50 users and 10,000 suppliers work together, due to standardized processes and controls with defined operating procedures. The company has an integrated, automated approach that simplifies its procure-to-pay processes—from purchase requisitions to purchase orders—and eliminates manual and redundant activities and errors.
Within the new system, 100% of procurement approvals are now auto-triggered workflows based on predefined parameters with e-mail alerts when actions are needed, reducing the need for follow-ups. A standardized NFA template enables decision-making for approvers, senior management, and suppliers and shortens the approval cycle significantly. Procurement contracts are automatically routed to legal, HR, and administration, as appropriate, creating additional efficiencies and reducing contract leakages and spot buying. The company has intuitive catalog-based procurement for various materials, and inventory is optimized due to improved supplier response times and lead-time reductions.
The company has also benefited from real-time dashboards, which provide management with access to analytics and reports that track the purchasing process and provide improved spend visibility.
Moving forward with continued innovation and modernization
To add further innovation to its procurement operations, Exide is evaluating other SAP technologies. The company is considering using the generative AI capabilities of the Joule copilot to create AI-assisted user experiences. The procurement team is also looking at the base edition of SAP Ariba Contract Intelligence by Icertis, which is available for SAP Ariba Contracts to add authoring, clause library, negotiation, and redlining functionality. The team is also evaluating the SAP Spend Control Tower solution to support spend analytics and insights and the SAP Ariba Category Management solution to help categorize the company’s sourcing processes into a hierarchy of projects, teams, milestones, and approval rules.