Bertrandt expands its supplier base to provide more competitive comparison options

Covering all your bases

Bertrandt has a clear goal for its tail-end spend: to access a large supplier base with minimal administrative work. Users should have the option to choose from a wide range of suppliers offering competitive terms. After all, the greater the choice, the higher the likelihood of finding alternatives in the event of delivery delays or cancellations. That’s why Bertrandt has decided to add the Unite solution with a diverse supplier network and integrated marketplace to its existing e-procurement system via an interface. “Integrating Unite as a punch-out via cXML was the easiest option for us and worked with our existing structure,” says Karsten Schmidt, Vice President of Corporate Infrastructure, Management System & Procurement at Bertrandt. Bertrandt’s 10,000 requesters now have access to hundreds of pre-integrated catalogues and over 27 million items. All marketplace transactions are bundled via a single creditor, saving the accounts department additional administrative work.   

Letting your suppliers compete for real

Bertrandt also leverages Unite to allow its existing suppliers to compete with new ones. This enables users to quickly compare prices, delivery times and conditions on the Unite platform. Catalogues with pre-negotiated terms of preferred suppliers can also be added on the platform to customise the assortment.

Bertrandt brought 65+ of its pre-existing framework agreement catalogues to the Unite platform. Its handy cross-catalogue search feature quickly delivers product results from pre-existing suppliers and the marketplace assortment. This gives procurement teams a good overview of what the market has to offer and makes quick comparisons a breeze. “The market regulates itself, allowing us to identify suppliers with low turnover in no time,” says Karsten Schmidt.

Putting the platform in charge of catalogue management

Connecting to the Unite platform also saves Bertrandt’s purchasing department a lot of time and effort when it comes to catalogue management. “We’ve transferred as many of our suppliers’ catalogues onto the platform. This has saved us from having to manage each catalogue individually and has consolidated all our contacts in one place,” says Karsten. Catalogues are no longer taking up space in Bertrandt’s system, which means they no longer need to be maintained by the company itself. Instead, they’re integrated according to a set standard and hosted directly on the Unite platform.

A very popular solution: “Our users want to type in what they need, find it and order it. It’s as simple as that,” says Stefanie Sandkuhl, Strategic Procurement Manager at Bertrandt. In particular, the comprehensive search function and basket optimisation feature, which smartly assembles each shopping basket based on preferences such as price, delivery time, or the number of partial deliveries, proved to be highly effective in practice.

Unite’s CO₂ reporting feature for order data

Bertrandt and Unite are currently working on a CO₂ reporting system that records and analyses the carbon emissions that each order generates and makes them available for download. “With a clear system in place, we aim for a transparent CO₂ score,” says Stefanie Ober, Environment and Sustainability Executive at Bertrandt.