[Case Study]: Wavin

Wavin adopt Market Dojo’s eSourcing solution as part of their digital transformation journey

Wavin are the world’s leading suppliers of plastic piping systems and solutions. Their products are primarily used in the drainage and water supply services, supporting areas such as heating and cooling, soil and waste, distribution of drinking water and gas, and telecoms.

The company is headquartered in Zwolle, Netherlands, where it was founded in 1955. They operate in over 25 countries in Europe and have a network of partners across the world.

Daniel Hack is a Territory Buyer at Wavin and one of the key users of Market Dojo’s software. When he arrived at Wavin, Sourcing Dojo was in the process of being introduced to the team and given his experience and interest within Procurement he was keen to be involved.

“I did not actually bring in the Sourcing tool, it was done by Peter Verkaaik, he is our Procurement Director. When I came in we started up the cooperation with Sourcing Dojo. This is the first eSourcing platform that we’ve used at Wavin.

As well as me, four of my colleagues from the Purchasing team were asked to be key users. So we received training at the beginning of 2018 from one of the team at Market Dojo who introduced us to the tool. Five of us, as five different teams, were set up as key users to manage the tool, and to help our colleagues when working with Sourcing Dojo.”

As Daniel mentioned this was the first time that Wavin had used an eSourcing platform. The idea for a sourcing solution came about through the acknowledgement of Digital Transformation, and a need to adapt digitally to an evolving function.

There were no pain points as such, rather a case of adapting a process that needs to move with the times, to optimise results. 

“I think at Wavin it was more a case of look, we have a changing world at the moment, we are facing digitalisation and we need to look for smart solutions to help optimise our work. 

If you look at tendering, it’s quite obvious that the process has stages and these became quite standard. It’s always good to standardise the way of working in an online environment so we looked for online tools. We understood the importance of working online at this moment in time, with digitalisation, and that I think was the main reason we went for an eSourcing platform, to standardise the process of tendering.”

Prior to using Sourcing Dojo, the Wavin team were using the manual method of emails and spreadsheets to run their tendering process.

By moving to an eSourcing solution there was a degree of learning and training that needed to be implemented. However, Daniel and his team were able to pick up the platform quickly, due to its easy-to-use nature.

“Yes, for me it was quite easy. We had training where we were presented the online platform and were walked through the tool. . The Sourcing Dojo platform itself is quite straightforward, so it was easy to pick up. It was really useful to have the training at the beginning to get familiar with Sourcing Dojo. I had some questions afterwards, but it has always been easy to contact the team or to schedule a meeting to clear some things up.”

Sourcing Dojo is primarily being used by the Wavin team to improve its tendering and RFI processes. They have experimented with a couple of auctions throughout the organisation but are looking to standardise the tendering process initially.

The nature of changing your processes will, of course, have an effect on your suppliers. Fortunately for the team at Wavin, it has been all positive feedback from both their new and old suppliers. The concept of participating in an online tendering process is one that suppliers are becoming more aware of according to Daniel. 

“They have been able to adapt quite quickly. What I tend to do when I start a tender is call my suppliers, or potential suppliers, and make them aware of Sourcing Dojo. I feel like if you make them aware of the fact that they will receive an email from Market Dojo and that it’s an online platform, they adapt very fast. Little or no concerns were raised from my suppliers and as I think I already said it’s quite straightforward. You just need to click a link, make an account and then go through the process. I think a lot of suppliers are getting used to online platforms, so it’s not much of a surprise for them.”

“Would I recommend Sourcing Dojo? Yes of course. I think if we look in general terms I would recommend online digital platforms, so in this case eSourcing platforms. And yes, Sourcing Dojo is easy to use. We have had good experiences all over the team with using Sourcing Dojo, so I would definitely recommend it to other people.”