Speaking at the mySAP SRM track, Bala Iyer, director, Indian Institute of Materials Management spoke about an open book approach to e-sourcing. “Considering a real-time analysis of procurement needs in today’s dynamic world, the Indian Institute of Materials Management would churn out professionals to meet the growing need for SRM professionals throughout the world,” he said.

Meanwhile, S. Y. Kulkarni, project manager, Tata Technologies dwelled on SAP release 4.6c and its use in 5 installations throughout India. He disclosed that the business suite used at Tata Motors was SRM. According to him, there were 3000 users on a single server in Tata Motors. “The SAP R/3 and Tata Motors integration was one of the largest integration projects in India,” he added. The project was named VECTOR: Value enhancement by Collaboration through Technology and Operation Restructuring.

Supplier evaluation would be possible through quick sourcing: i.e sourcing through removal of non-value added activities. According to him, SRM implementation in Tata Motors was done in two phases: phase 1 was evaluation of SAP Netweaver and phase 2 meant rollout in all places across India.

Implementation of SRM was done by remotely connecting 6 servers across the country. Various features of the mySAP SRM suite including Live Auction Cockpit, Contract Re-negotiation were used. Scenarios including retrospective price negotiation were discussed. SAP Netweaver 2004 with Exchange Infrastructure 3.0 was used. Meanwhile, BI Warehousing 3.5 was used since 3.1 was not compatible.

He stated that interface with Denis, the product development management tool was essential for an integrated procurement process solution giving the bidding engine an automated closed loop sourcing cycle. According to him, SAP Netweaver was a central platform for electronic commerce.

On a real-time basis 1000 vendors could be handled by the solution. Systems could also hypothetically handle huge aggregation volumes, he said.

Meanwhile, Bhushan Indane, Bristlecone India Limited, spoke on the mySAP SRM supplier enablement policy in Mahindra & Mahindra, (M&M) which had moved from SRM 2.0 to SRM 4.0 in two years.

Implementation was done in a phased manner, and supplier workshops were held to educate M&M staff about the business benefits in terms of reduction in process lead time. “In terms of total cycle time reduction, it was 3 weeks,” he said.

Later, Mangesh Phadke, Infosys, Head SAP SRM, talked about SRM practices at Infosys. Discussing SRM using ESA, he talked about the procure-to-pay cycle and the integration of the procure-to-pay cycle with SAP Netweaver. He stated that mySAP SRM using ESA had been implemented in Infosys in a limited manner, and only for the R&D team to match material specifications. Responding to a query from the audience, he said this could be used by small companies as well.

Andy Waroma, SAP APAC, talked about the road ahead and how mySAP SRM could be used in a company-wide initiative. He talked about accessing and the various ways of analyzing SRM.

Illustrating his examples with the Kraljic matrix, a procurement/HR tool, which could be used by companies to reverse auction, and initially analyse any prospective vendors, he talked about how companies could use mySAP SRM to get key KPIs and how suppliers and professional purchasers could use this on the fly.

SRM 5.0 could be used in sequential bidding, ranking, and so the tender committee could use it to understand the hard facts behind any contract negotiation. Purchase Orders and contracts could be used by any system, and SRM 5.0 could integrate with an existing SAP R/3 system, he said.

SRM was technology agnostic and could integrate with any backend system. Analysing your suppliers, risk exposure and currency fluctuations could be handled by the mySAP SRM suite.

Responding to a query posed by the audience, about choosing between SRM and the ICH (Inventory Collaboration Hub) suite, he said that SRM was only a subset of ICH, and both could be utilized by vendors. According to him, the key clients of the mySAP SRM suite in India were ONGC, Tata Motors, Hero Honda.

Finally, N Sridhar, consulting director, SAP India discussed about the best business processes using mySAP SRM. The major issue for CIOs according to him, was how to make the procurement process easier. Using the various features of mySAP SRM including retrospective pricing, CIOs could bring down the implementation time frame down.

He observed that the major pain points for CIOs were the documentation along with mySAP SRM. Summing up, he said mySAP SRM could be used by CIOs across India, which would bring about a gradual and overall reduction in TCO.