How Mars Veterinary Health Scaled Supplier Onboarding by 50%

Challenge

Looking to automate and streamline procure-to-pay processes, Mars Veterinary Health decided to move from a dated in-house procurement system to Coupa eProcurement software. Initially, the company needed to transition key suppliers to the new purchasing platform, which represented a combined transaction volume of over 800,000 invoices and $250M in spend. However, more than half of those suppliers could not support a cXML protocol or, more importantly, how Mars Veterinary Health required the cXML. As a result, the average onboarding time for a new vendor was 6-9 months.

Mars Veterinary Health engaged TradeCentric to both assist with integrating key high-volume suppliers via EDI, cXML and other methods to conform and adapt to their new Coupa eProcurement software as well as streamline the supplier onboarding and transaction processes. Uniquely positioned in the center of B2B buyers and suppliers, TradeCentric supports thousands of eProcurement integrations on 150+ procurement systems for customers across 40 countries.

Solution

The TradeCentric Platform is an iPaaS technology that acts as a layer between Mars Veterinary Health’s Coupa Software eProcurement system and their suppliers’ eCommerce and order management back-end systems. The Platform can consume any type of data and transaction communication protocols from any business system, translate into the protocol needed and map accordingly to enable procurement and commerce business applications to communicate effectively and enable businesses to transact electronically.

“Previously, the cycle time to deploy a new supplier on Mars Veterinary Health’s homegrown system averaged 6 to 9 months. With TradeCentric’s support, cycle time to deploy a supplier has now decreased by 50%”

David Karakas
Director of Procurement, Mars Veterinary Health

Result

Mars Veterinary Health significantly reduced the time and effort required to transition key suppliers from their outdated homegrown procurement system to their new Coupa eProcurement software. The company can also onboard a broader range of new suppliers without requiring them to undertake complex IT projects to support integrating with Mars Veterinary Health’s processes and eProcurement solution. TradeCentric’s B2B connected commerce solutions helped Mars Veterinary Health achieve:

• Cost savings for themselves and their suppliers
• Efficient integration with Coupa
• Centralized spend through their procurement solution
• Expedited ordering and invoicing cycle time
• Reduced manual errors