Negotiating was never the hard part
AGRA’s procurement team knew how to close a deal. What it could not answer were the questions around the deal:
- Which opportunities deserve a category manager’s time?
- Did the factories move to the supplier we negotiated with?
- Did the saving we reported ever reach the P&L?
Invoices sat in PDFs under a rough taxonomy. Finding an opportunity meant reading invoice after invoice, and even strong proposals stalled when stakeholders challenged the numbers.
“Solid proposals were turned down because basically they didn't trust the data we were presenting.”
“We were basically walking past 1.3 million euros every year because of the lack of visibility.”
One view of spend, across every business unit
Mithra gave AGRA a single, trusted view of its transactions, suppliers and business units: what is bought, by whom, and from which supplier.
“For the first time, we can actually see spend across all the business units. Who is buying, what are we buying and from whom are we buying?”
The preparation that opened every major sourcing project disappeared.
“Traditionally, huge projects would typically start off with three months of going through PDFs and trying to dig for information. That's gone. Now it's two, three hours in Mithra to do the same work.”
The time went back into sourcing. AGRA now runs more sourcing events each year, and savings output per FTE has close to doubled. The company reduced FTEs in indirect procurement and reinvested that capacity in category management.
Proving the saving reached the business
A signed contract only creates value if the business changes how it buys. AGRA can now go back into the transactions and see where a new agreement has been adopted and where old buying behavior remains.
“It's two minutes in Mithra and I have a full report detailing out which factory has moved to the new supplier and what factories are still with the old suppliers.”
Every recommendation now traces back to the underlying transactions, which changed how the business responds.
“The anxiety is gone because you know that you have full control of the data. You know that you know every detail. Therefore, we predominantly get a yes answer.”
“With Mithra, we now have better visibility and clearer prioritization of where to run sourcing cycles. That has made us increase the targets for indirect procurement by a factor of two.”
From procurement analytics to procurement performance
With a systematic way to find opportunities, prioritize category work and verify realized savings, AGRA raised what it expects from indirect procurement.
“Our ambitions for indirect procurement today are much higher than they were two years ago. We now have the data to build a strategy and build the targets with confidence. Mithra was a cornerstone to actually do a transformation with increased ambitions on indirect procurement.”