Simplifying MRO Procurement with RS SYNC™: A Smarter Digital Marketplace Solution

Today we take for granted the ability to pick up our phones, tap a few buttons in an app and order anything from food to furniture, tickets to transport, straight to our door. It is easy to forget that these online consumer marketplaces have only been around for a couple of decades.

Why MRO Procurement Needs a Digital Marketplace Revolution

That same technology now pervades the B2B space too, but investment is often low on the list of digital priorities for procurement departments. In a recent survey of Chief Procurement Officers, for example, PwC found that the top three areas for investment were data analytics (33 percent), source-to-contract (30 percent), and contract lifecycle management (29 percent). Marketplace came second to last (7 percent), with only virtual purchasing assistant coming lower (6 percent).

However, companies, particularly manufacturers, that make the switch and introduce digital marketplace technology to manage maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) procurement can unlock significant value with these platforms simplifying MRO processes, improving efficiency, and driving savings.

The Digital Marketplace: Built for Real-World Manufacturing Environments

Where B2C platforms led the way, B2B equivalents are catching up.

“When they were first introduced, the user experience wasn’t very intuitive,” recalls Simon Hilton, Senior Vice President for Sales and Marketing at RS Integrated Supply. “Now this has changed. Greater user functionality allows searches to be quicker, more easily executed and give more results, which therefore gives the user more opportunity to get what they want more quickly.”

Ease and simplicity are crucial, argues Robert Kline, Chief Technology Officer at RS Integrated Supply. “Every interface must be easy for users with different skills sets. It’s also a solution for down on the manufacturing floor. If you have a marketplace solution that’s just available in a laptop version, it might not be optimal because of where technicians need the information. The solution needs to meet them where the work happens. That’s where it’s most helpful and most powerful.”

RS Integrated Supply learned that lesson early on when developing its industry-leading propriety platform, RS SYNC™ Marketplace. The company now makes the technology available in iOS and Android mobile versions as well as a web version. RS SYNC™ Marketplace also synchronizes with other Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, allowing seamless transaction processing and updating client systems with accurate information.

“It’s a platform that connects customer systems and processes with our broad range of MRO suppliers,” says Kline, “and we do this by integrating the customer’s systems with our systems, so requests and transactions can flow seamlessly back and forth.”

Reducing Hidden Costs and Complexity in MRO Transactions

Simplicity is important at a macro level too.

Traditionally procuring even the lowest value items has involved multiple steps. These often include, but are not limited to:  

1. Approval by authorized manager
2. Request for quotation by buyer
3. Purchase request by end-user
4. Collecting quotations by buyer
5. Agreement on the best options by buyer and end-user
6. Raising of purchase order by buyer
7. Shipment by supplier, mostly without tracking info
8. Receiving by storeroom, mostly without knowing the end-user
9. Delivery to end-user by storeroom employee
10. Invoice received and managed by buyer
11. Payment by accounting

Each of these takes time and keeps those involved from value-adding activities. The costs of this process, some of which are not clearly identified, soon accrue. Digital marketplaces, on the other hand, allow users to search for products from approved suppliers and see all available options in one place. This brings the convenience of a consumer buying experience to the work environment and, importantly, streamlines or automates many aspects of the procurement process.

Digital marketplaces can streamline as well as simplify the MRO purchasing process, for example, by consolidating purchase orders and invoices to minimize transactional workload for buying teams. More efficiency translates to less time and less cost. “The overall time between purchase to pay is reduced,” notes Sinan Satır, Global Product Manager at RS Integrated Supply. “It makes a massive difference.”

“There is a big shift in terms of workload and resource implications when there are not as many touch points,” says Costanza Campi, Senior Vice President for Global Procurement at RS Integrated Supply. “It reduces the resources involved in every single transaction and, because you’re not going to incur all of those hidden expenses, it leads to an overall lower cost and generates saving opportunities.”

Standardization Meets Flexibility: How RS SYNC™ Adapts to Your Needs

The simplification and streamlining of MRO procurement processes are not the only benefits of digital marketplaces. This technology introduces standardization too, helped by Global IDs. “Global IDs play an important role in the process,” says Hilton. “They are the gateways to delivering value, allowing us to turn client product data into information. That information can then be used to deliver inventory optimization, tailoring product information to consumption and locations, reducing spend and working capital.”

The ability to unlock this value lies at the heart of RS SYNC™ Marketplace. “Most companies struggle with getting the full value out of their processes and data,” says Kline. “The RS SYNC™ Marketplace system handles transactional processing in a standardized way. This helps them to simplify, standardize, and unlock that value.

“However, the biggest advantage of RS SYNC™ Marketplace is that the system is both standardized and flexible. It standardizes process to enhance efficiency and transparency but crucially clients can configure solutions to meet their requirements without needing custom development.”

It is, for instance, configurable to meet the needs of different industries. As Hilton explains, “You can curate your marketplace products so that they comply with the requirements of your business. With health and safety products, you can have ones that comply with your industry’s standards – say that are food safe or if you’re working in place where you must have anti-static products or certain cut resistance gloves. You can also standardized agreed specifications of products.”

Organizations can also configure approval settings. “We have multi-level approval functionality,” says Satır. “This allows businesses to create whatever scenario they need regarding approval. They can assign approvers and adjust authorized budget levels with full flexibility.”

Data-Driven Decisions: Visibility and Control in MRO Purchasing

As these examples show, simplification, streamlining, and standardization don’t mean elimination of choice. On the contrary, a platform such as RS SYNC™ Marketplace enables users to make more informed, data-led decisions.

“We give the end-user a common front end with a full view of all their data,” says Kline. “We give them transparency and visibility of their inventory. That’s powerful.”

This transparency drives efficiency and cost control, says Campi: “Do I need to buy an item, or do we have it in stock? If I have oversight of where my goods are, I can better plan for maintenance as I know when I’m going to have the materials that I need.”

RS SYNC™ Marketplace also enables buyers to see different suppliers for each item. Why is this important? “Different suppliers might have different prices as well as different lead times,” says Satır. “One may have a higher price but a faster lead time. If it’s a plant stopper that you need quickly, you might go for that over the lower cost option.”

“If you had just one provider with their own standard catalogue, what if you’re plant is stopped but they’re out of stock and you need something quickly?” says Hilton. “We provide that availability of product and accessibility of the product, which means the client’s plant keeps running. “It’s a service solution, not a sales solution,” he adds. “A standard catalogue will get you to buy a product from whoever is providing the catalogue, whereas we open up a marketplace with multiple catalogues. You have plenty of product choices and competition in front of your eyes.”

Three Ways RS SYNC™ Marketplace Simplifies Complex Orders

Digital marketplaces can provide flexibility and choice in terms of order generation too.

RS SYNC™ Marketplace provides three options, depending on whether you are using the mobile app or desktop version: browse and order from millions of products sorted into detailed categories, punch-out to a third-party vendor or request a quotation from RS Integrated Supply buyers to source it for you.

The latter two are especially useful for organizations with complex technical specifications. “The punch-out option allows users to access specialized vendor websites directly from Marketplace,” says Satır. “You can search for the item on their platform but after adding it to your cart, you can check out using RS SYNC™ Marketplace. It means each transaction still has all the approvals and other checks in place.”

This quotation request process, powered by the SYNC Automated Sourcing (SAS), is included in the functionality of RS SYNC™. SAS streamlines vendor selection and order processing for non-stock or custom items, ensuring efficiency and alignment with client preferences. It factors in details like previous purchases and enables clients to consider criteria such as lead time and pricing before ordering. Once the client approves the request, the system automatically generates the purchase order.

“We collect a lot of data across many clients on the products we source,” says Hilton. “That allows RS SYNC™ to match requests with relevant suppliers and in many cases instantly return a quote if we have live data.”

“If not, the system still speeds up the process by automatically sending RFQs to the most appropriate vendors and consolidating their quotes for our buyers. From there, buyers can share options with the client to ensure they have a choice, for example, prioritizing lead time or cost. Automated sourcing accelerates procurement and connects our clients with the products they need much faster than the old paper-based process.”

A Platform That Solves Real MRO Challenges

“RS SYNC™ Marketplace is a flexible platform that drives process standardization, efficiency and cost savings solutions,” concludes Kline.

“The actual transaction processing engine inside RS SYNC™ is very configurable. We can go in and without customizing, without doing software development, we can configure a solution that is standardized but flexible and drives savings, reliability, and transparency.”

“This combination of standardized technology and configurable solutions, in conjunction with the world-class integrated supply expertise that we provide, helps clients to solve their biggest MRO challenges.”

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