Ace Hardware recognized several opportunities to leverage Levelpath’s technology to better define processes and streamline operations across multiple teams.
Connecting Distribution Centers
With 16 distribution centers supporting their capital expenditure sourcing activities, Ace Hardware faced challenges in fostering effective relationships with these critical hubs.
While procurement had built relationships with marketing, supply chain, and retail, the same level of engagement was missing with their distribution centers. “It was clear stakeholders were uncertain when to engage with procurement, what the procurement process was during the sourcing activities, why some processes took so long, or where to get help to drive the processes,” explained Baig.
Procurement needed to give the distribution centers the transparency they needed to see updates and understand where things were within the sourcing process.
To address these issues, the procurement team needed to provide the distribution centers with the necessary transparency to monitor updates and understand the status of various sourcing processes.
Streamlining Legal Partnerships
When Ace Hardware’s facility managers needed to establish new supplier relationships or vendor contracts, they faced a significant disconnect with their Legal department. The problem? The facility managers and the attorneys couldn’t be further apart in terms of their day-to-day lives. The two teams operated in completely different worlds, making it challenging to create contracts that effectively served everyone’s needs.
Beyond this communication gap, Ace Hardware lacked a standardized contracting process that could adapt to their diverse supplier relationships. Ace needed a way to build out those standards and templates so the facility managers could make sure they were buying from a supplier for the right price.
Transforming Supplier Intelligence
With over 60,000 vendors in their global database, Ace Hardware’s supplier management system was complex and fragmented. While they had legacy systems that housed that supplier data after each step of their onboarding process, Baig saw an opportunity to make that data work for the business.
“Many solutions can simply warehouse data,” explains Baig. “Our vision was to make that data truly actionable. We weren’t looking for another lookup tool, procurement needs data that drives meaningful actions.”
There was a desire to connect Ace’s existing technology stack with a solution that would eliminate data silos, enable data capture, and connect that information so the business could have better conversations about supplier management, and determine preferred suppliers. This would transform static supplier data into a dynamic business asset.
