A performance-led, enterprise scale procurement strategy

Committed to sustainable metals

A leading international mining and metallurgy group producing manganese, nickel, mineral sands and lithium. With operations spanning six continents, 16 mining and industrial sites, and a workforce of over 10,000 people, the company plays a central role in providing sustainable metals for global energy transition while meeting the growing demand for critical resources.

As the company scales its innovation and sustainability goals, a performance-led, enterprise scale procurement strategy is a key focus for optimising value.

We spoke with a member of the company’s procurement team to find out howMarket Dojo has helped transform the group’s sourcing practices.

* All quotes are translated from French and edited for clarity.

The Challenges

Mining value from data

As a multinational mining group with operations from New Caledonia to Argentina and across Europe and Africa, the company’s procurement function faces considerable complexity.

“My role is to manage the tools available to the procurement department across the budget-to-pay process—from supplier panel and tender management, to everything related to the transactional process for example, purchase requests, purchase orders, goods & services receipts.”

With multiple ERP systems and data spread across fragmented platforms, it was critical for improving performance to consolidate procurement data and build meaningful, decision-driving insights.

“The main challenge is data structuring, analysis, and consolidation between different systems with different architectures. We want to track performance indicators, validation times or order volume, in an automated way. It’s a complicated challenge.”

Improving procurement performance

Without a unified view, buyers had limited insight into procurement activity.

“Ultimately, the main goal is to improve the procurement department’s overall performance and P&L savings. And to do this you first need to know precisely and reliably what you’re buying and have indicators that are automatically calculated based on the data that you have.”

“We want to know the state from which we’re starting, then to be able to calculate and measure the improvement in performance.”

Streamlining processes

The company is also enhancing the management of tenders, particularly the approval process.

“We have a process with two approval validations—one for launching the consultation and one for the contract award. We want to track approvals for these validation steps.”

Before Market Dojo, tenders were managed without a dedicated tool, making tracking, transparency, and collaboration difficult. “Five years ago, there were no tools in place to manage these tenders. We were starting from scratch.”

The Solution

Choosing the right partner

The company selected Market Dojo Sourcing as its tender management platform based on two key criteria.

“Price and ease of use, we needed visibility into consultations, document collections, and supplier participation. Market Dojo met these needs with a very good user experience and a fast implementation process.”

Quick Quotes: Simplicity meets structure

One feature in particular stands out for the team.

“Quick Quotes is an undeniable advantage. I don’t say this lightly, it’s as simple as sending an email to a supplier but with the advantage of traceability. It’s a win-win!”

Learn more about Quick Quotes

Enabling business continuity and governance

A major goal is to bring 100% of tender activity, regardless of value, into the platform and maintain a history of consultations, “We want all quotes, even for limited amounts, to be made in Market Dojo Sourcing. This will give us full traceability and ensure business continuity.”

They on to say, “A consultation is very dependent on the human being, on the buyer behind it. So, if the buyer becomes ill, if the buyer leaves, if it is an external service provider and the project ends, we must be able to ensure business continuity. Otherwise, we risk having to start from scratch, or that there is a loss of information.”

The use of Market Dojo Sourcing also helps enforce internal compliance rules and standardise requirements by tender value.

“Additionally, using Market Dojo allows us to be more compliant with our internal procedures, which require us to collect certain information depending on the value of the project.”

The Results

Empowering buyers and boosting adoption

Market Dojo Sourcing is widely embraced by the company’s procurement team.

“It makes life a lot easier for buyers. We don’t force them to use Market Dojo Sourcing, they choose it because they see the benefits. It’s become the centralised place where they can find all the information regarding procurement projects.”

New team members are onboarded quickly thanks to the platform’s intuitive design and robust access controls.

“Another big advantage is that when we have new people joining the procurement team, it’s easy to grant rights so that a person can access a specific consultation or a set of consultations related to their scope of work. The platform allows fine-grained access rights—people can view or act depending on their scope. That makes life easier.”

Enabling collaboration and transparency

Beyond procurement, Market Dojo has benefitted other departments.

“The Collaborators tab allows both business leads to be part of the process, to provide technical or other expertise, as well as those who will be involved in the supplier presentations.”

“Also, the people involved don’t feel ‘Now it’s gone to the procurement team and it remains in a black box’ or “Procurement doesn’t want me to see what’s happening and the offers that are made.”

“As soon as you have this doubt between procurement and the other business functions, it’s guaranteed that things progress less well or not as harmoniously as possible. With Market Dojo the process is very transparent so it creates confidence that ultimately facilitates the smooth progress of consultations and projects. People no longer feel excluded or that things are hidden from them.”

Having a platform that centralises all the consultation data, and that the whole business can access, helps create transparency and trust. This has been a big advantage in terms of collaboration between the procurement function and the other business functions.

Improving supplier competition

This transparency also improves supplier selection and negotiation of tenders.

“If someone has a preferred supplier, maybe based on [product] quality or the relationship, but we can show they’re too expensive, then it helps us to build the case for them to negotiate. Procurement has savings objectives so it’s useful for both parties.”

Supportive partnership

In terms of customer service, we asked about the procurement team’s experience with Market Dojo as a procurement solution provider.

“We have a very good relationship with Market Dojo. Weekly catch-ups help us track projects and new needs. The support team is super responsive, users can open a ticket through the integrated chat and receive responses quickly.”

They go on to say, “Both [customer support] channels work well. We can see that there is motivation and when we make suggestions [for enhancements], they are taken into account by Market Dojo.”

The Future

Driving towards 100% platform adoption

The company’s objective remains clear – centralise all consultations in Market Dojo Sourcing.

“We want to get closer to 100% of consultations on the platform, even for the smallest requests.”

This will enable full traceability, ensure business continuity, and provide a foundation for performance analytics.

Key lessons learnt

The company offers a clear message for organisations still using email and spreadsheets.

“As soon as a Procurement team is formed, it’s no longer possible to work without a dedicated tool.”

“The risk of continuing to work with email is that we don’t know if a document has been sent, or we can miss an email. And if we send a document to be completed, and it’s an unprotected Excel format, we may not realise that there have been modifications made by a supplier.”

“There’s no obstacle to deploying Market Dojo, it’s simple and operational in two weeks.”

“The standardised aspect of Market Dojo and the ease of deployment are two big benefits. Using Market Dojo also allows for business continuity, as you need a tool to track what is being done – it’s as easy as email but without the risks.”

And lastly…

If you were to recommend Market Dojo to someone, what would you say?

“I would say it’s easy to use, reduces risks, makes it easy to engage with suppliers, and the teams at Market Dojo, both for support and guidance, are excellent. That’s a lot of selling points.”

Mining Value from Procurement Data