A Leading Pharma Manufacturer Connects Procurement Around SAP
About the company
A large pharmaceutical manufacturer buying direct materials, indirect spend, services, MRO and capital goods across a regulated multi-plant business. SAP HANA holds budgets, release rules and the core transactions, and had to keep holding them.
- Industry
- Pharmaceuticals
- Scale
- A regulated multi-plant manufacturer running on SAP HANA
- Scope
- Catalogues, sourcing, auctions, award, supplier compliance and ERP execution
At a glance
Before Proconomy
- Three toolsets, one process
- Sourcing ran on email
- Rate contracts sat in PDF
- No portal joined the pieces
- SAP could not be disturbed
After Proconomy
- More buying runs on contract
- The handoff stops being a retelling
- Suppliers do their own data entry
- Follow-up stops being a job
- Scope grew, SAP did not change
Key products
- Intake & orchestration
- Sourcing & RFx
- eAuctions
- Supplier portal
- Integrations
The challenge
Email RFQs, separate auction tools and PDF rate contracts all sat outside SAP. Each new indirect category the team took on added another set of handoffs, and rate contracts that lived in PDF and Excel leaked because nobody could search them at the moment of buying.
New workflows had to preserve every SAP validation and keep access costs down. That was a constraint, not a preference.
Three toolsets, one process
SAP, the auction tool and the contract files each held part of procurement, and people carried work between them.
Sourcing ran on email
RFQs and the handoff from buyer to purchase-order desk depended on mail threads.
Rate contracts sat in PDF
MRO and service rate contracts lived in PDF and Excel, so nobody could check a rate quickly enough to use it.
No portal joined the pieces
Compliance, orders, invoices and service entry had no single supplier-facing home.
SAP could not be disturbed
New workflows had to preserve existing validations and avoid adding SAP seats.
What the manufacturer actually asked for
Five things, and every one of them had to work without touching SAP.
- Contracted rates searchable at the moment of buying.
- One path from requisition through sourcing to purchase order.
- Suppliers able to serve themselves on documents, orders and invoices.
- Less manual chasing of bids, risk flags and compliance reminders.
- Existing SAP budgets, release rules and validations preserved.
What we built
Searchable catalogues, one workflow from intake to purchase order, a supplier portal, agents for ranking and reminders, and an SAP integration that changes nothing in SAP.
Digital catalogues
Searchable MRO and service catalogues put contracted rates in front of the buyer, so the contracted route is the easy one.
One connected sourcing workflow
Requisition intake, RFQ, auction, award and purchase order share one workflow and one audit trail.
Supplier self-service portal
Suppliers manage their own documents, orders, invoices and status updates in one place.
Agents for ranking and reminders
Agents rank bids against the criteria, flag risk and send compliance reminders on schedule.
SAP integration, not replacement
SAP keeps budgets, release rules and core transactions; approved outcomes are written back to it.
The result
What changed once it was running.
More buying runs on contract
More requests use an approved contract before sourcing starts, which is where leakage was happening.
The handoff stops being a retelling
Buyers and the purchase-order desk work from one visible trail rather than forwarding context.
Suppliers do their own data entry
Compliance and invoice actions are completed by the supplier instead of chased by the buyer.
Follow-up stops being a job
Automated reminders and risk alerts removed the manual tracking that grew with every new category.
Scope grew, SAP did not change
Procurement covers more indirect categories with the ERP exactly as it was.
See this running on your own numbers — fifteen minutes, no slides.
Request a workflow demonstrationThis will sound familiar. If any of these are you.
- Your rate contracts are in PDF, so nobody checks them before buying.
- Every new indirect category adds handoffs rather than absorbing into a process.
- Sourcing happens in email and the audit trail is a mailbox.
- Any proposal that touches SAP validations is dead before it is read.
Where this connects
The questions we get asked.
No. That was an explicit constraint. Suppliers and requesters work in Proconomy and the supplier portal; SAP keeps its existing users, budgets, release rules and validations.
The catalogue is the fastest route rather than a locked gate. Where a category needs it, policy can require an approved contract or an authorised exception — which of the two applies is configured per category.
This is a question for the account team rather than a page, because the honest answer depends on which Ariba modules are in scope. What is true here is that the ERP was retained and the sourcing, catalogue and portal work was added around it.
No. Agents rank bids against the criteria, flag risk and send reminders. The award is a human decision with a named approver, and the ranking shows the reasoning behind it.
The same problem, at your scale
Every group that runs more than one operating company arrives at the same place: policy that exists on paper, applied differently in every plant, evidenced by whoever happens to remember. Bring us the workflow where that costs you the most, and we will run it against your rules.
Someone from client success replies, not a sales sequence. If we are not a fit we will say so on the first call.
Not ready to talk to anyone?
Fair enough. Both of these work without giving us your email.