Vattenfall AB the Swedish state-owned energy company, has signed a global deal with Achilles, international supplier information management specialists, to provide a single supplier pre-qualification system for all their business units and geographies.
This is an innovative and ground breaking solution to the problems of gaining visibility of suppliers across a global business. Achilles will provide a consistent view of Vattenfall’s supply base of over 15,000 suppliers, across all Vattenfall’s business units including hydro, nuclear, distribution, services, heat etc, and for the following regions in which they operate Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Finland, and the UK.
Achilles has provided pre-qualification services to Vattenfall since 2002 on an individual country basis to address regional requirements. This arrangement extends the scope of Achilles’ solution to provide one approach to supplier sourcing and pre-qualification for Vattenfall’s enterprise and in so doing, is expected to provide a significant competitive advantage.
The benefits to Vattenfall are clear; this solution mirrors the globalisation of their supply chain; providing one approach to corporate responsibility, compliance and risk management; delivering efficiencies in terms of one administrative process with one point of entry for their suppliers.
One of Vattenfall’s major drivers was the need to develop their suppliers and to make the process of doing business with them easier. A supplier in one geographical region will now gain far greater visibility to Vattenfall’s procurement departments in other regions and need only register and qualify once. The agreement also allows Vattenfall to make use of Achilles joint audit capability.
“Freshness of information on suppliers is a priority for us. The ability to holistically track our suppliers and leverage the resulting data will enable us to continue developing our best in class supply base. To know with certainty that the suppliers we rely on are fully compliant with our procurement standards allows us to drive the quality of our supplier data to improve the basis of overall relationship management.” Gerard Jacquemin, Head of Supplier Management, Vattenfall Group Procurement
“This is hugely significant for Achilles and shows that Vattenfall understand the importance of having a consistent view of their supply base, across all the regions that they operate in. We are delighted that Vattenfall trusts in our ability to manage their supplier information on such a comprehensive basis.” Adrian Chamberlain, CEO of Achilles.