CABOT CORPORATION
‘ the art of the possible ,’ which is re-imagining how a particular function or an end-toend process , or geography should operate , looking for best practices , and then asking ourselves , why would that not work for us ?”
“ If we had one main driving principle as we are approaching these different initiatives to digitise and renew our company , it is not being biased towards technology or a system , but it ' s starting from the viewpoint of looking at the business process and driving for the best possible outcome . The technology discussion somewhat becomes a secondary one . Although we are doing this in the context of the technology discussion and inspiring this conversation , we are realising a result that first and foremost is improving the business .”
Spend Management Transformation When it came to further improving spend management , Cabot embarked on a more encompassing program to transform their Source to Pay ( S2P ) organisation into a simplified digital operation with advanced experiences and streamlined processes , including how to manage sourcing , supplier qualifications , shopping , requesting , ordering , contracting , analytics , budget visibility , approvals and invoicing . Skerl shares with us how they got there . “ We challenged ourselves , the perception of traditional approaches to transformation , and accelerated what was originally thought to be a multi-year journey to a nine-month transformation of existing S2P processes in partnership with a modern , best in class Coupa Business Spend Management platform and KPMG , the leader in procurement process transformation .”
“ At Cabot , with the focus on renewing our ways of working and accelerating the adoption of digital tools to drive business value , we have also targeted tail spend as another feature of our broader S2P transformation . We started with an agile focused pilot in the North American region , to bring visibility for maintenance , repair , and operations ( MRO ) category , and deliver significant savings in this space . In just the span of months , the ability to analyse our tail spend and provide transparency has been eye-opening for Cabot . Fairmarkit , with their platform , has been a trusted advisor to us throughout this process . They have challenged us and pushed us to innovate and improve further . And at the end of the day , they have delivered on our vision of the art of the possible .”
144 October 2021