Initial Situation
A multinational corporation with more than 8,000 SAP users worldwide is facing a major compliance challenge in indirect procurement. Despite clearly defined purchasing policies and existing framework agreements, around 35% of employees still order uncontrollably through external channels, third-party marketplace portals, or directly from non-contracted vendors. These orders systematically bypass governance, framework discounts, supplier qualification, and audit controls.
The financial and operational consequences are significant. Procurement prices are on average 18% higher than the negotiated catalogue prices, and lost discounts add up to roughly €2.5 million per year. Audit trails for off-catalogue orders are incomplete or missing entirely, and security exposure rises whenever unauthorised or unqualified vendors enter the supply base. Procurement leadership cannot enforce that only the official catalogue is used, because the SAP front-end allows employees to leave the standard process. Policy violations end up on the desks of Compliance and Legal, where they tie up scarce capacity in manual tracking and case-by-case review.
Your Solution with simple system
simple system enforces compliant catalogue usage natively inside SAP via OCI Punchout, so the official procurement process becomes the path of least resistance for every one of the 8,000 users.
- OCI Punchout is configured as the standard entry point for all indirect procurement transactions.
- SAP ME1L and ME1N are preset to the simple system catalogue with OCI, so users land in the compliant environment by default.
- Employees cannot navigate directly to external vendors because the guided order process consistently enforces catalogue usage.
- Release process with policy checks: vendors outside the approved catalogue are blocked automatically before order creation.
- Complete audit trail logs every punchout, every order, and every vendor interaction, providing 100% compliance documentation.
- The analytics dashboard shows the current maverick buying rate in real time, so procurement leadership can immediately identify deviations.
- Automatic notifications on policy violations are sent directly to procurement leadership for fast escalation.
Result
Maverick buying drops from 35% to below 5% within the first months after rollout. Negotiated framework discounts are fully realised, the SAP-native experience eliminates training overhead, and audit compliance reaches 100% across every plant and legal entity.
Your Benefit
- Time savings: workload in Compliance and Legal reduced by around 80%, equal to 60 hours per month or roughly 720 hours per year.
- Measurable EBIT impact of around +€1,811,000 per year: +€1,575,000 (maverick buying reduction) + €200,000 (realised framework discounts) + €36,000 (compliance and legal capacity).
