Grupo Ageas Portugal: Modernizing procurement for the digital age
Explore Grupo Ageas Portugal’s journey with SAP
Grupo Ageas Portugal’s busy procurement organization is responsible for thousands of purchases each year. But to run at maximum efficiency, it needed to streamline, centralize, and digitalize its supplier management system. This meant selecting technology up to the task, achieving strong partner collaboration, and enabling a well-orchestrated rollout.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Insurance | Lisbon, Portugal | 1,335 employees | SCORE Consulting |
suppliers registered on the company’s supplier management system.
active contracts managed through SAP Ariba solutions.
in transactional volume documented annually.
Head of Procurement, Grupo Ageas Portugal
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Insurance | Lisbon, Portugal | 1,335 employees | SCORE Consulting |
suppliers registered on the company’s supplier management system.
active contracts managed through SAP Ariba solutions.
in transactional volume documented annually.
Head of Procurement, Grupo Ageas Portugal
Making the move to paperless procurement
Grupo Ageas Portugal is part of Ageas AG, which has been a leading European retail and business insurance company for almost 200 years. People throughout Portugal depend on Grupo Ageas Portugal to insure their livelihoods. The company’s procurement and accounts payable team was managing US$109 million for the company’s key organizations, with more than 500 active contracts, 6,500 purchase orders, and 20,000 invoices annually.
To maximize efficiency for this busy organization, the company wanted to digitalize its supplier management system. The main targeted areas for improvement were its manual procedures, decentralized contract repositories, and complex audit trails. Shifting to paperless processes proved to be a game changer in optimizing day-to-day tasks for people at Grupo Ageas Portugal.
Its vision was a “best-in-class” procurement system that would deliver an optimal user experience, improve its supplier communication, support cross-team requirements, and allow procurement and invoicing to focus on higher-value tasks.
Enabling a supplier management system for the long haul
To support its ambitious initiative, the company opted for a three-phased approach to maximize system readiness and adoption. This included the core team collaborating with internal and external partners to evaluate needs, assessing the right technology solution, implementing extensive change management and training, and closely monitoring usage and results.
With support from SAP and its partner SCORE Consulting, Grupo Ageas Portugal integrated a suite of SAP Ariba solutions to support its supplier management transformation.
Phase one consisted of implementing the SAP Ariba Lifecycle and Performance solution to enable supplier management capabilities and the SAP Ariba Sourcing solution to leverage supplier selection and budgeting tools. During this phase, the company also implemented the SAP Ariba Buying solution to manage buying workflows and the supplier portal, as well as the SAP Business Network Commerce Automation solution to gain supplier collaboration, spend visibility, and compliance features.
For phases two and three, the team added the SAP Ariba Contracts solution as its digital contract experience and repository and the SAP Invoice Management application by OpenText to digitalize and automate invoice processing. With these SAP solutions connected together, the procurement and invoice teams had a comprehensive, efficient, and digitalized supplier management system.
Adding up procurement benefits with SAP Ariba solutions
A big contributing factor to Grupo Ageas Portugal’s procurement modernization was its phased implementation plan. The company successfully achieved many key factors necessary for the success of its initiative with SAP Ariba and other SAP solutions. These included executive support for the cross-organizational team at the helm, focusing on solution capabilities instead of customization, a robust communication plan for internal teams and suppliers, and extensive user training and support.
With digitalized and centralized supplier management, more than 1,100 of the company’s suppliers have registered, more than 500 contracts are in place, 1,400 RFxs are logged, and more than €115 million in transactional volume is documented annually.
Manual work has been reduced to a minimum now that each step in the procurement process is tracked in SAP Ariba solutions. The legal department at Grupo Ageas Portugal can validate contracts digitally, and both suppliers and internal stakeholders can sign contracts digitally. Budgets are better controlled with supplier cost comparisons, optimal pricing, and more savings for the company. Procurement and invoice teams can refocus on higher-level work instead of manual tasks. The organization has transitioned from simple administrative procurement to compliance procurement much faster than expected with SAP solutions. Now, it can focus on creating added value for the organization by optimizing costs and strategically planning the procurement activity together with internal stakeholders.
Gaining more value from technology investments
The company regularly reviews features of SAP solutions as well as usage to maximize adoption rates. The team also gets continual support and education through SAP Training and Adoption services and the SAP Ariba Best Practices Center service, learning new ways to make the most of capabilities for optimal supplier management efficiency.
Featured partner
SCORE Consulting is the supporting partner for Grupo Ageas Portugal’s procurement transformation. The company provided implementation services and continues to work with the organization on system maintenance and improvements.