Johnson Matthey (www.matthey.com) is a speciality chemicals company focussed on its core skills in precious metals, catalysts and fine chemicals. The group’s principal activities are the manufacture of auto-catalysts and pollution control systems, catalysts and components for fuel cells, pharmaceutical compounds, process catalysts and speciality chemicals; the refining, fabrication and marketing of precious metals; and the manufacture of colours and coatings for the ceramic, glass, paint and plastics industries.

Johnson Matthey has operations in 34 countries and employs around 8,000 people. Its products are sold across the world to a wide range of advanced technology industries. When Johnson Matthey’s Board of Director’s wanted to develop an eBusiness strategy, eProcurement was quickly identified as a potential opportunity. An intense review process to establish the business justification, uncovered a raft of purchasing inefficiencies. Senior buyers were swamped with administration (50% of available time), the manual requisition system was extremely inefficient & slow, the Company’s buying power was not being effectively leveraged to obtain better commercial terms and maverick spending was rife.

Taking a sober and hard-headed view of the potential benefits of eProcurement, the Johnson Matthey team assessed the likely hard savings of an investment (i.e. purchase price times volume).

Following Board approval in December 2000, Johnson Matthey’s eProcurement system went live in April 2001. The system has grown consistently over the past 18 months, both in terms of the number of suppliers and spend, and the number of sites using the system.

During the forthcoming Knexus eProcurement Member Summit, the Johnson Matthey team will provide a candid insight to the business lessons they have learnt, the benefits and challenges of their eProcurement investment to date, plus an assessment of strategic opportunities they are investigating to leverage their eProcurement investment e.g. freight; eSourcing; eInvoicing.

Johnson Matthey’s case study will provide a catalyst for broader discussion and debate amongst member companies to unlock the value from eProcurement investments.

The case study focuses on the business impact and benefits obtained, together with the change management challenge associated with an eProcurement project e.g. how do you get people to change their working practices; how do you organize your purchasing teams to support this type of initiative; how do you get senior level commitment. Although the discussions will take account of the technology infrastructure required, this is not a priority issue for the day.

Please join us if you’re responsible for eProcurement initiatives in your organization and would value a ‘behind-the-scenes’ insight to a peer group company.