Recover 2% of lost purchases through contract and quote control automation.

The Challenge

A company in the electronics sector faced a recurring issue in managing its purchases: the difficulty of systematically comparing purchase orders (POs) with the framework contracts signed with its suppliers.

The purchasing teams placed orders throughout the year with the same suppliers, often in operational urgency. In practice, the verification of consistency between contractual conditions (prices, volume discounts, billing conditions) and the POs was done manually, on a case-by-case basis.

The purchasing manager was aware of the limitations of this approach:

• A process heavily dependent on individuals, hence a source of errors

• Controls carried out only on the largest amounts

• Approximately 80% of orders were never checked due to time constraints

This situation exposed the company to invisible financial losses, as well as a risk of contractual non-compliance.

The Challenge

The company engaged Siembra to conduct a targeted diagnosis of its purchasing practices.

The aim: to quickly identify if there were discrepancies between supplier contracts and the issued purchase orders.

The diagnosis revealed a clear observation:

• Approximately 2% of the purchasing volume analyzed was impacted by discrepancies

• These discrepancies mainly arose from:

  • unapplied volume discounts

  • price errors

  • billing inconsistencies

Following this diagnosis, Siembra deployed its platform to:

• Systematize the comparison between contracts and POs

• Establish a continuous and automated workflow for control

• Detect discrepancies in real-time, before they impact billing

• Move from a one-off control approach to a robust and sustainable process

The Impact

The project allowed the purchasing team to transform the way they work:

• Highlighting significant savings that were previously unseen

• Drastic reduction in the risk of human error

• Analyses that took hours are now carried out in a few moments

• Shifting from reactive control to proactive management of contractual commitments

Beyond financial gains, the company strengthened the reliability of its purchasing processes and the trust in its data.

— Emmanuel