Case Bravida

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Background

Bravida is the Nordic region’s largest total supplier of technical installation services. The company has 8000 employees in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The organization is decentralized with around 160 units in Scandinavia. Bravida acts on a market where competition is intense, and an overall goal is increased efficiency in all of the company’s activities. To improve the purchasing process Symbrio was chosen as a partner.

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Scope

Before Symbrio was introduced as a purchasing tool, orders were placed through traditional channels such as phone, fax, e-mail and pick-up orders. This meant a time-consuming process for the project leaders to gather information about prices, delivery capacity etc from the suppliers.

Except for the orders being handled manually, the administrative process was based almost entirely on paper documents (order responses, dispatch advices, invoices etc). This meant that the process of authorizing invoices involved sending large amounts of paper documents between people and units.

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Aim
Bravida’s aim was to introduce a group purchasing tool which would eliminate non-value-adding procedures within the purchasing process. Also the tool should provide the project leader with an overview of material procurement and a comprehensive view of the purchasing function. It should also support the order procedure by providing current article prices and delivery capacity online, and make it possible to automatically check the invoiced price and compare it to price on the original order and delivered quantity.

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Solution
Bravida chose to engage Symbrio to implement a complete purchasing and invoice handling tool. Symbrio handles the full process from providing the suppliers’ article catalogues and enabling price comparison for every order, to invoice handling and authorization.
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The project leader creates his/her orders in the purchasing system by logging on to a web page, reached from any computer with an internet connection. Symbrio handles the communication with the supplier through EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) or a web interface.
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Ordered material will be delivered the next day unless something else is agreed. Orders can be created outside of the system, e.g. by phone or pick-up at the supplier warehouse, and order information will still be registered into Symbrio.

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System integration
Symbrio is flexible to be integrated with the customer’s ERP or other business systems. Suppliers with an EDI connection can also integrate its order handling system with Symbrio. This means that orders are automatically processed which rationalizes sales administration for the supplier. A grand majority of all transactions in Symbrio are made through EDI.

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Implementation
When Symbrio was introduced at Bravida, a dozen participants from the organization, including plumbers and electricians as well as purchasing management, took part in the preparations. The project was run mainly from a purchasing, and not an IT, perspective. Focus was put on making the project leaders, who are to use the system, see the practical value and business contribution that the system was to make.

Results for Bravida

A grand majority of Bravida’s material purchases are today made through Symbrio, and around 1800 employees are using the system, the majority on a daily or almost daily basis. In a user survey made in 2010, 97 % of the respondents said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the system.

The whole purchasing process is handled online which has led to major internal efficiency gains. All of the value chain from supplier to installer has been made more effective and material costs have decreased. Today Symbrio is used by all Bravida units throughout Scandinavia.

Results for suppliers

As orders from Bravida are processed directly through the supplier’s order handling system, this saves administration costs for the supplier. All parts of the value chain gain from an electronic order flow, as resources are released in every step. Being chosen to be included as a supplier in Symbrio also means the unique possibility to expose the offered product range to the whole Bravida organization.