GE go-live: 500,000 suppliers, six languages, 10 countries using Aravo SaaS
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 10/29/2008 1:16:00 PM MDT
GE has launched Aravo SIM (supplier information management) to power and transform GE's own SIM processes across all of its business units worldwide.
Aravo SIM is a Web-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that will allow GE to automate and streamline supplier information-related business processes, improve supplier data quality, drive compliance, and reduce costs. Aravo SIM also gives GE's suppliers an easy-to-use, self-service interface to author and maintain information required to do business with GE at both the corporate and business-unit levels.
GE manages what is arguably one of the world's most complex supply chains, conducting business with more than 500,000 suppliers across thousands of entities in more than 100 countries. GE sought to control this complexity with a Web-based software solution that was highly configurable and easily adopted by users. The initial implementation phase supports GE's corporate supplier management organization, and will be rolled out to all GE business units by year end. Additional phases are planned for 2009.
The platform's intuitive dashboards, best-practice workflows, and automated task management features enabled GE to quickly achieve its supplier management goals in a cost-effective and efficient manner; and create, configure, and launch a new set of firm-wide supplier enablement and management processes that offer task-level information and visibility to all global users via role-based dashboards and alerts.
"Our sourcing and compliance strategies require our employees to see 500,000 vendors with a common view across hundreds of global systems. Coordination requires strong vendor management discipline, both lean and simple, backed up by a global platform that can lock in the process. Aravo SIM met these requirements extremely well," says Tom Hattier, manager of GE's Corporate Initiatives Group, Shared Sourcing Services. "Aravo SIM allows us to syndicate the information to our various purchasing, accounts payable, and other systems so that we can have one consolidated view of what's going on with all of our suppliers."
