Systempilot with a talk at the ADV conference "Trends in digitalisation".

The conference.

The ADV, Austria's working group for data processing, brings digitalisation leaders from business and administration together at its conference. In 2020 under special circumstances: masks required away from your seat, sanitiser dispensers in the hall, and anyone who couldn't travel joined via online stream. The conference thus practised what it preached.

The reality check.

One year after founding, we stood on stage with our core topic. The opener: "A Day in the Life of a Purchasing Manager." This is how the day should look: develop supplier relationships, evaluate KPIs like on-time delivery, create forecasts, find and remove bottlenecks in the supply chain. And this is how it really looks: most of the time goes into reordering, master-data maintenance and other operational work. Strategic supplier development doesn't happen at all or on an ad-hoc basis, and procurement hangs on the know-how and gut feeling of individual people.

5 reasons why purchasing no longer works without automation.

The 7 areas of process automation.

These seven areas are still the grid by which we automate purchasing processes today. How that works in detail is shown by the articles on automatic demand forecasts and on the order proposal.

The case study: inventory cut by 20%, despite 40% growth.

The proof was the Swedish retailer Proffsmagasinet. The starting situation: 40% growth brought enormous admin effort, purchasing decisions were made by gut feeling, excess stock tied up capital that was urgently needed for the assortment expansion. The solution: ERP and inventory optimisation in a nightly exchange. Article data, historical sales and open orders flow in, optimised stock parameters and confirmed order proposals come back.

The result after six months: 20% less inventory at 40% growth. Demand trends are detected automatically, dying products identified and drawn down, and inventory turnover and service level improved. The talk is part of a series with which we share our knowledge, on stages like the Handelsverband Tech Day or the VTH annual conference.