Case study
Sonoco’s appetite for innovation resulted in a record implementation. With the ambitious Fairmarkit integration team, Sonoco was live in two weeks. They had optimized the end user experience and taken advantage of Fairmarkit’s Coupa integration which led to sourcing over 100 requests per day in the LATAM region, achieving their goal of 60 events in just one day.
The Company
With net sales of approximately $6.8 billion in 2023, Sonoco has approximately 22,000 employees working in more than 300 operations around the world, serving some of the world’s best-known brands. With our corporate purpose of Better Packaging. Better Life., Sonoco is committed to creating sustainable products and a better world for our customers, employees, and communities. Sonoco was named one of America’s Most Responsible Companies by Newsweek.
The Challenge
Sonoco’s decentralized procurement model theoretically allows for shorter cycle times and regional autonomy. However, the manual sourcing process meant that buyers would depend on requesters to contact them in advance to provide requirements for goods/services in order for sourcing to occur. Once requirements were solidified, the manual process of contacting suppliers, obtaining and evaluating quotes began and was usually facilitated through multiple channels, i.e. email or phone, often resulting in longer cycle times.
Eira Bunnell, Continuous Improvement Lead, engaged Fairmarkit to assist Sonoco in standardizing their purchasing workflows and improve KPIs for cycle time, risk, and cost-savings. The goal was to arm their Latin America (LATAM) teams with tools to comfortably source goods while meeting the aforementioned metrics in a measurable manner.
Tactical sourcing was a very manual process. Requesters would reach out to the plant buyer (email, phone call, chat) and request quotes for goods or services. The buyer would then initiate the sourcing process with their local suppliers by sending emails or calling suppliers for quotes for every item that the plant wanted to order. Quotes were then compiled, and the winning quote was forwarded to the requester for them to enter in the system. The requester entered the requisition, and the request was routed back to the buyer to review the entry created by the requester. This manual process not only caused delays but also left us with little visibility into compliance and efficiency of our sourcing operations.
Selecting & Implementing Fairmarkit
Sonoco leveraged Fairmarkit’s integration with Coupa to map out custom workflows, route spend directly to buyers, and create a centralized space for procurement teams to receive and monitor requests.
Sonoco’s appetite for innovation resulted in a record implementation. With the ambitious Fairmarkit integration team, Sonoco was live in two weeks. They had optimized the end user experience and taken advantage of Fairmarkit’s Coupa integration which led to sourcing over 100 requests per day in the LATAM region, achieving their goal of 60 events in just one day. Added benefits to this implementation included Sonoco strengthening their policy compliance across the organization, reduced cycle times and cost savings. With go live a success, Sonoco very quickly decided to expand their program to include multiple new categories and sites.
Requesters now enter their item request directly in Coupa and the events are routed to Fairmarkit to initiate an RFQ. When the winning quote is awarded, Fairmarkit updates the request automatically with the RFQ details and the requisition continues on with the business approval process. This was made possible due to the strong integration between Fairmarkit and Coupa.
Having the requesting and sourcing process integrated into one system has provided some key benefits to the LatAm team:
Automation & Efficiency: Automating the RFQ process means that the buying team is no longer inundated with emails, phone calls, and the associated down time. Instead, requests are entered and reviewed within the purchasing system and then automatically created in Fairmarkit for processing. Fairmarkit’s AI makes it easy to identify the top suppliers for each event, while the quote evaluation time is cut down significantly due to having all the information in one place. Award details are automatically sent to the purchasing system, thus cutting down coding errors to zero, reducing PO rework and invoice match exceptions.
Visibility and Control: Purchasing managers now have visibility into the number of suppliers invited by the plant buyers. They have been able to identify plant buyers who are frequently single sourcing RFQs and have been able to apply corrective action to increase the average number of suppliers added to RFQs. They can also see where business is being awarded to suppliers who are not the lowest cost and inquire as to the rationale.
Wider Supplier Base: Fairmarkit’s supplier recommendations provide plant buyers with an opening to suppliers who have never been used at that particular site but are still in the company database. This led to increased savings opportunities by creating competitive sourcing.
Standardized Processes: The implementation of Fairmarkit has standardized the quoting process and also introduced one central tool for all the buyers. The buying process now doesn’t have to stop when a buyer is out of the office because of the delegation functionality and access to in-flight events within the system.