REHAU Industries' journey to operational excellence through procurement optimization

Addressing the complexity of the procurement process

For REHAU Industries, a leading developer of polymer-based solutions for the construction, furniture, and industrial markets, efficient supply chain processes are vital to business operations. A heterogeneous system landscape and disconnected tools can lead to lower efficiency. The global scale of the company aggravated past efforts for standardization, resulting in disconnected processes and many manual tasks.

In addition, limited benchmarking and reporting capabilities led to workarounds and time-consuming activities. The lack of advanced sourcing, tendering tools and inconsistent contract management hampered access to data on procurement, supplier status and contract types, reducing transparency and efficiency. Consequently, REHAU Industries wanted to eliminate operational inefficiencies, enhance spend transparency and ensure compliance to facilitate seamless collaboration with its extensive network of suppliers.

Developing a cutting-edge platform for efficient procurement processes

BearingPoint assisted REHAU Industries in implementing a comprehensive End-to-End platform for all of its procurement activities. To gain early insights into the tool und the functionalities, the project team initially developed a prototype directly in Coupa. This allowed local and international REHAU Industries stakeholders to interact with the system and provide regular feedback right from the start of the project. Accordingly, specific requirements were thoroughly considered in the primary stages to ensure that the core model addressed all operational, legal and regulatory aspects.

From an operational perspective, BearingPoint first targeted sourcing, contract and supplier management to familiarize key staff with Coupa, followed by comprehensive user acceptance testing, serving as a self-learning experience to prepare the trainers. In phase two, the focus shifted to purchase-to-receipt (operational procurement), further encouraging the REHAU team to take ownership of the platform.

BearingPoint also developed supplier enablement and change management strategies to ensure that REHAU Industries was prepared for operational execution. The new e-procurement platform was enhanced with the third-party AI tool AskLio to facilitate quick information retrieval for REHAU's staff. BearingPoint's collaborative methodology and transparent communication addressed critical issues effectively and identified practical solutions, ultimately empowering the company to successfully deploy the platform to other subsidiaries within the international group.

Through this approach, REHAU Industries was able to publish over 300 sourcing events in the platform, onboarded over 200 suppliers and negotiated roughly as many new contracts within the first 9 months after go-live with Coupa. Additionally, they have processed and approved over 7.000 requisitions in the system resulting in over 7.200 automatically created purchase orders with roughly 14.000 goods receipts booked.

Optimized procurement and improved regulatory compliance

REHAU Industries improved its purchasing workflows by leveraging a unified platform on a global scale. The company now benefits from enhanced source-to-contract processes that save time and significantly improve efficiency. The new platform, powered by AskLio's embedded AI, supports operational and strategic purchasing activities, including document comparison, price benchmarking, negotiation preparation, and supplier sourcing. With data-driven information from across the enterprise, REHAU Industries can better plan its supplier contracts, optimize savings, and overall increase procurement productivity.

Through process automation, the newly implemented solution improved operational efficiency and significantly reduced the risk of errors previously caused by spreadsheets and paperwork. The intuitive design together with applying efficient change management resulted in high levels of adoption and satisfaction among the company’s sourcing and procurement staff.

Moreover, REHAU Industries employees can quickly find information thanks to the AskLio AI chatbot that supports the purchasing process. The AI feature performs compliance checks to verify that vendor quotes, pricing, payment terms, and providers’ contact information are accurate and complete. This allows REHAU's procurement teams to spend more time on value-added activities, moving from an operational role to a tactical and strategic function. The innovative platform also ensures compliance with a wide range of internal and external regulations, including national and EU legislation, supplier certifications, and cybersecurity.

REHAU

With over 12,500 employees across 150 locations, REHAU Industries focuses on engineering progress and developing sustainable polymer-based solutions for the construction, furniture, and industrial sectors.