How Keila became more efficient and improved Nivea's supplier onboarding time by 80%

NIVEA, a brand belonging to the German Beiersdorf group - headquartered in Hamburg, began its success story in 1911, when it launched the world's first moisturizing emulsion on the market and today is one of the leading companies in the skincare segment. Present in over 150 countries, the company established itself in Brazil in 1975 with the opening of its office in São Paulo. In 2003, it inaugurated its factory in the municipality of Itatiba (SP).

The great challenge of a large company after establishing itself for 130 years in its sector and becoming one of the market leaders is to always maintain the quality of its services above expectations. No company survives for so long in the market delivering only the essential.

As efficient as your business model may be, it is necessary to revisit your processes and understand which points need improvement. Keila Oliveira, a purchasing analyst, is responsible for performing this function at Nivea.

When we found Keila and diagnosed the challenge she had to overcome, we delivered, as always, beyond expectations. We created value in supplier management and provided information about the company's foundation that they never imagined they could have access to.

Check out Keila's testimony and see how we were able to optimize Nivea's purchasing process.

The main challenges

Workload and process completion time

Reduce the onboarding time of a new supplier and create processes that would enable a panoramic analysis of the business, with access to data that could be used to improve the governance of the homologation processes. In addition to ensuring compliance and efficiency throughout the process. Decentralized informationKeila needed a platform that would bring together all the information from its suppliers, both new and existing, centralize standardized information, and make it easy to visualize the onboarding status and risk of each one.

Manual work in basic activities

Stop wasting countless hours with manual spreadsheets and reports. All of this, without losing the standard of quality that a century-old company has already presented to the market.

Homologation time

In a bureaucratic and manual environment where each new supplier took, on average, 15 days to have their data collected, inspected, and approved, dissatisfaction and delivery time were frustrating.

Inconsistency in stored information

Without a centralized tool and the possibility of automated validation, the information sometimes got lost, depending on bureaucratic processes to organize them in folders. They only discovered that certain information was valid at the end of the purchasing cycle, generating rework and occasional inconsistencies in some stored information.

Linkana offered us a platform where we could solve all our problems and also added value to our supplier management with important and secure business information that we didn't analyze before

Keila Oliveira

Analista de Compras LATAM @ Nivea/Beiesrdorf

The solution

Keila and the Procurement team were well aware of the problem they were facing and what they wanted in a solution to finally resolve the bottleneck for registering new suppliers. A supplier management software that had the flexibility that Nivea needed was necessary. And that's how Linkana came about.

Process automation and centralization

We took on the responsibility of simplifying all the bureaucratic processes of Nivea. By handling the registration, compliance, and risk of new suppliers, we automated the entire collection of data and information, allowing more useful time for the team to focus on strategic decisions.

All data in one place

The entire team was able to search, in a single portal, all the information of each supplier. Certificates, public lists, federal revenue data, and all types of documents. It was also possible to consult the history of each document, safeguarding the auditing area.

Linkana's action recommendations

With our intelligent software, Nivea's purchasing team received insights and indications of problems in their supplier base. We also created automated communications between the purchasing teams and suppliers to expedite the exchange process.

“Today we have more than 1,000 suppliers mapped in Linkana with easy access to anyone in the company, including auditors. We optimize the time of stakeholders and other areas involved in the approval process.”

Keila Oliveira

Analista de Compras LATAM @ Nivea/Beiesrdorf

Benefícios gerados

Eficiência operacional e menor custo

Com a contratação da Linkana, houve uma melhora de 80% no tempo de homologação dos fornecedores. Em alguns casos, a Nivea é capaz de homologar um novo fornecedor em até 1 dia. Além disso, o processo de revisão foi centralizado e agora o único trabalho que o comprador precisa fazer para adicionar um novo fornecedor é através de 1 clique.

Mitigação de riscos

Também foi possível otimizar o número de informações coletadas para tomada de decisão e mitigação de vários riscos com um aumento de 70% na volumetria de informações coletadas automaticamente sobre cada fornecedor.

Consistência e centralização da informação

Com a contratação da Linkana, não houve mais inconsistência nas informações coletadas, uma vez que todas as informações eram padronizadas e validadas pelas duas equipes. Além disso, foi gerada uma redução de custos fiscais devido a problemas de dados bancários, o que fez a NIVEA Brasil virar referência e criar uma melhor prática LatAm pela Global Audit Beiersdorf. Outra prática que reduziu as inconsistências da informação foi a automação das validações de regras fiscais e tributárias do fornecedor já no momento do cadastro, o que antes era feito manualmente para ser inserido no ERP, agora já é feito em um sistema integrado de ponta a ponta.

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