XP Inc, one of the largest financial institutions in Brazil and recently listed among the Top 5 most valuable companies in the country, shared at the 2024 Purchasing Forum how Linkana revolutionized their qualification process and supplier management.

The lecture, conducted by Letícia Bastos, Purchasing Coordinator at XP Investimentos, showcased the challenges faced, the achievements made, and the next steps of this successful partnership.

The challenge: a manual and costly process

Before implementing Linkana, XP dealt with:

• A base of 5,000 suppliers and about 80 new registrations per month;

• Highly manual qualification process, involving consultations across multiple bureaus and saving reports in internal folders;

• Lack of standardization and traceability of information;

• High time consumption: 30 to 45 minutes per qualification on average;

• Risks of inconsistency, data loss, and communication difficulties with suppliers.

Even with a partially implemented decision engine in 2021, the gains were limited and did not meet market best practices.

The turning point: the arrival of Linkana

In 2022, XP adopted Linkana as their central platform for supplier qualification, integrating it into their technology ecosystem (COUPA and ERP). This change was marked by two major challenges:

1. Integration with Serasa: including the Serasa score within Linkana's consolidated score;

2. Integration of three systems (COUPA, Linkana, and ERP): standardization of data and automation of the entire registration and qualification flow.

Overcoming these obstacles, XP managed to automate qualification and follow market standards, resulting in significant gains in efficiency and quality.

Tangible results

After implementation, XP achieved:

• Reduced qualification time: from 30–45 minutes to just 10–15 minutes;

• Increased productivity and reduced manual errors;

• 100% auditable process: documents and histories centralized on the platform;

• Greater governance and risk mitigation, with access to multiple data sources and automatic monitoring;

• Improved communication with suppliers, with centralized records and user-friendly interface;

• Reduced fraud with automated validation of banking data via micro-deposits;

• Integrated ESG Rating, providing native insights about suppliers' socio-environmental criteria.

Additional benefits for internal areas

In addition to operational improvements, areas such as compliance, risks, and accounts payable reported:

• Reduced payment returns;

• Easier document analysis;

• Reduced risks and increased process security.

Next steps: continuous improvement

Despite the advancements, XP continues to invest in improvements with Linkana:

• Supplier performance evaluation: use of customized forms by category, with stakeholder support;

• Enhanced risk matrix, based on the Kraljic methodology, to prioritize critical suppliers and expedite low-risk processes;

• Total integration of partner areas within the platform, unifying compliance and audit flows in a single environment.

According to Letícia Bastos:

“The arrival of Linkana was our turning point. We transformed our operational efficiency, elevated service quality, and today we have a much more robust, auditable supplier management aligned with market best practices.”

Conclusion

The case of XP Inc demonstrates how the digitalization and automation of supplier management can generate significant gains in productivity, security, governance, and collaboration with suppliers.

With the partnership between XP and Linkana, qualification ceased to be an operational bottleneck and became a strategic differentiator for the company.