[CASE STUDY]: Logitech

Over the last 40 years, Logitech has pioneered the development of consumer electronics in the high-tech industry. 

The company operates as a multibrand and multi-category organisation, covering a range of industries such as gaming and music. In the words of their Head of Global Indirect Procurement, David Latten: “Logitech works in cloud-connected peripherals that are the final touch between people and their IT experiences.”

In today’s increasingly digital world, the need for innovation is critical to Logitech. The demand for technology to be better and work faster than ever before has ensured innovation stays paramount to their processes. 

But introducing and developing new technology has meant the supply chain at Logitech needs to be managed closely. 

Having previously outsourced their procurement process, the function was brought internally less than 5 years ago. The assembled team was small and with no technology in place, they struggled to manage their spend and data, as David explains.

“When we brought the procurement function in-house, we had no best of breed tech. It was very much a previous generation procurement set up, of doing RFPs with Excel sheets, emails and PDFs. The phrase RFP wouldn’t have been a popular one in the company at that time and it was pretty apparent that needed to be improved.”

“We were a very lean team of ten, looking to manage $400m of spend. It was difficult to touch very much of that spend at any given time because of our small team and our RFPs being unwieldy and time-consuming.”

There was a clear need for the team to cut down on their eSourcing efficiency and the time associated with running RFPs. To combat this challenge, the Logitech team identified Market Dojo as a potential provider.

“We needed a solution that would be easy to use and given where we were in our development, we wanted something that could really revolutionise how many RFPs we can do at once, with minimal barriers to entry. Market Dojo worked for us on all those levels.

“The success was apparent almost right away. Members of the group went from being able to run maybe 1 or 2 RFPs at once, to a handful of them simultaneously within weeks. It has really enabled the team to impact a lot more of the business.”

One of the most important factors to the Logitech team was the need for urgency with any potential solution. It was Market Dojo’s on-demand functionality that really sang to David and his team, giving them the flexibility to use our solution as and when they needed it, without any significant start-up costs, or training. 

“Market Dojo is easy to pick up and play and the barriers to entry from a cost perspective, are very low. Our exercise changed from an assessment of who else is out there, to become a question of: why should we look elsewhere? Because this does what we need.” 

How Logitech have used our solutions

As the Head of Indirect Procurement, David’s team is responsible for all of Logitech’s Indirect category purchases. The most common of these is Marketing RFPs.

Recently, however, the Compliance department at Logitech decided to use Market Dojo to run a very niche event. The team were running global compliance tenders, reaching out to agents across the globe to sign off their products as compliant across different countries.

The team had previously run these events manually using spreadsheets and emails, which was a time-consuming process and difficult to manage. Faced with this challenge, they had initially considered specialist tools built to specifically run tendering events for compliance. However, these specialist solutions came with specialist price tags.

“It was a massive job for our team to be managing manually, in the old fashioned way of using spreadsheets and emails. But that’s been moved to a Market Dojo event and has been streamlined dramatically. We are still in the stage of due diligence, but there have been really impressive opex savings so far. 

“Before we’d even started seeing results, the team were delighted that the functionality and usability of Market Dojo could be tweaked to do that event. So that was a niche event that proved Market Dojo’s usability and functionality.”

What have the benefits been of using Market Dojo?

Having initially wanted to identify an eSourcing solution as an efficiency play for their smaller team, Logitech’s Procurement function has benefited in a number of other ways according to David.

One thing that has changed internally, is the wider organisation’s perception of procurement. Having previously struggled to run time-efficient RFPs with sufficient ROI, the new way of working has helped the team to influence more areas of the business with effective returns.

“We are now able to get involved with more areas of the business, so it helps the internal perception of working with procurement. It proves that not only do we add value, but we also do it quickly and effectively.”

As well as working on a greater number of events, the quicker turnaround times, meant the team were able to modify their previous spend limits.

“We previously had quite a high cut off level with the dollar spend we would get involved with as a team, due to our limited resource. But all of a sudden we could start getting involved in an extended range of projects that we wouldn’t have before. With the eAuctions, we’ve seen that it’s not only an efficiency play, but we’re seeing very good results in pricing that I don’t think we could have dreamed of in the traditional way of running RFPs.”

The low cost of operating Market Dojo, meant Logitech was able to secure their initial ROI, within the first couple of projects they ran. Their impressive results to date could be summarised by the previously mentioned compliance tender, where the team were able to generate an impressive £300k saving, cutting their total spend in the category by a third.

Finally, the final point of eSourcing success came from Logitech’s Suppliers, who are now able to work with the company more effectively through the platform.

“I think that for the most part, our suppliers are delighted that it’s moving to this rather than emails and spreadsheets. There have been some specific instances where the suppliers have come back and let us know that it has been an easy friction-free experience, which is great feedback.”

To learn more about Market Dojo’s eSourcing Solution or to learn how any of our tools could help your business, please get in touch with a member of the team today.

You can also hear more from David and his thoughts on Digital Transformation, by watching our Webinar ‘Mapping Success Part 1’.