How Imperial Brands Enhanced Global Procurement Value

Overview

Imperial Brands was born out of a strong tobacco heritage stretching back to the 1700s. Today, Imperial Brands PLC is a dynamic fast-moving consumer goods company (FMCG). Imperial Brands’ primary business goal is to transition from an extremely mature tobacco producer and seller to a completely new business. In that context, Imperial Brands is aiming to become more agile and low-cost.

Procurement Mandate: Deliver Maximum Value to the Business by 2025

The team is spread across the world to cover both direct and indirect spend as well as capital projects, operations and logistics. In July 2019, the group launched a new 2025 Global Procurement Strategy designed to deliver maximum value to the business by ensuring Procurement focuses on the right outcomes and brings strong quality service to all stakeholders.

Solution

To deliver on the 2025 strategy, the team selected SpendHQ’s Performance Management solution to better manage pipeline activity, project visibility, and stakeholder alignment to projects:

• Gain a more complete view of Spend Management
• Manage and triage the demand to ensure that upfront work can manage its costs of service
• Significantly increase the level of user experience and adoption
• Ensure a greater integration between Pipeline and Sourcing activities

A Speedy Implementation to Vastly Improve Performance Management

From start to finish, the whole project was a quick turnaround being fully done remotely. The project started when a working group performed a deep review of process and technology adoption across global Procurement. Those insights influenced clear design principles and implementation requirements. SpendHQ was nominated end of November and went live by early January. The core group of four team members managed the project with SpendHQ’s customer success team. The entire project team was backed with a strong matter of trust from the Chief Procurement Officer, Gregory Lachas.

Results

Unanimous Adoption Eases the Work of Procurement, Legal, and Finance

Now, Procurement is comfortable and confident in what they are working on and presenting. The team gained a single source of truth for reporting all activities and unifying both indirect and direct practices. Data is easily accessible in a commonplace, which reduces manual work searching, sharing, and following up on data for key projects.

User adoption has been successful and unanimous because the solution is extremely user-friendly. Within four months of going live, the number of active users doubled. Today, more than 150 buyers are using the tool for daily operations. In addition, there are contributors from key stakeholders in other departments, including finance approvals.

Another added benefit is the contract management capabilities, helping the previously decentralized approach to join a common shared platform. The IT Group is impressed with how the global Procurement function has helped enhance contract management for buy-side contracts. Finance, IT, Legal and Procurement work together to improve governance and audit efforts thanks to the collaborative nature of the SpendHQ solution.

Editor’s note: SpendHQ’s performance management solution used by this customer was originally named Per Angusta, with the renaming following Per Angusta’s merger with SpendHQ in July 2022