Purchasing Controlling of municipal utilities at the City of Ulm

From pens to power plants: Strategic purchasing with Key Figures

Ulm. The heart of Stadtwerke Ulm / Neu-Ulm beats in Ulmer Karlstraße 1. Ten employees of the purchasing department move here with around 13,000 orders a year, a purchasing volume of up to 100 million euros. In order to keep a tight grip on all processes, the municipal utilities now use an innovative software solution that delivers strategic purchasing figures on a daily basis

How the city of Ulm has implemented this with the solutions of Simmeth System GmbH can be read in the following Success Story:

As a service department, purchasing at Stadtwerke Ulm / Neu-Ulm (SWU) is responsible for more tasks than in comparable large companies: He is responsible for the parent company and for the subsidiaries "Energy", "Networks", "Transport" and "TeleNet". "With us the orders for everything go over the table, which is needed: From the ballpoint pen over the streetcar up to the combined heat and power plant", describes Michael Klinck, head of purchasing, materials management and building management.

The data of various systems flow together

Therefore, the relevant data comes from more than a dozen different systems. They all come together in the new software solution: In the area of ​​key figures, Simmeth System GmbH is the software specialist and operates from southern Germany throughout Germany for municipal companies, medium-sized companies and well-known global players. The so-called "KPI Monitor" calculates key figures for operative process control on a daily basis - KPI stands for "Key Performance Indicator" - such as, for example. on-time delivery, the framework contract and complaint rate. Thus, the purchasing manager of the SWU can identify possible deviations from the company's own requirements at an early stage and counteract them in a targeted manner: "With the help of the process key figures, I can check: How fast and effective are we in purchasing? Do we solve the problems in the given time? "

With indicator, the framework contract rate increased

He has been able to increase the framework contract rate, an indicator of automated and lower-cost orders, from 20 to 40 percent in one area and up to 70 percent in another area. Glowing traffic light icons in the cockpit of the KPI monitor clearly and in color indicate what is going well and where there are problems. This visual system was also adopted for the management reports, according to Klinck. From selected reporting key figures, the system generates reports that inform a group of recipients from management about the performance of the purchase on a monthly basis and thus ensure transparency in the company. What had to be put together manually in an extremely time-consuming manner now works fully automatically with the new software. "Thanks to the traffic light system, the respective manager knows immediately what he has to pay particular attention to. Again, we save valuable time and resources that our leadership team can use elsewhere. "

Splitting into process and reporting key figures

By splitting into process and reporting key figures, municipal utilities can look at purchasing from two different points of view, whereby the same data reliably depend on them. "We benefit from the special flexibility of the Simmeth software: it has been adapted exactly to our wishes; We can also implement subsequent adjustments at any time, "says the Purchasing Manager of Stadtwerke Ulm / Neu-Ulm. The multi-faceted services of Stadtwerke range from the local supply of energy and water to the provision of local transport and the provision of telecommunications. In Germany, 1,400 municipal companies represent this important part of the utility industry.