Overview of the Renewable Energy Industry
The renewable energy industry at large comprises of energy sources including wind, hydroelectric, solar, and liquid bio-fuels. Today, organizations within the renewable energy space are investing heavily in R&D to meet the growing demands for cost-effective and environment-friendly energy sources despite the availability of fossil fuels. Apart from the regulatory government support, the growth of renewable energy industry is also marked by the growing concern to minimize the steadfastness of fossil fuels for energy consumption.
However, several factors are expected to disrupt the growth of this sector. The factors include:
- Increasing competition: With the entry of global leaders, the renewable industry is witnessing an increasing level of competition with new entrants attempting to gain a major segment of the industry by providing cost-effective solutions. Additionally, the shift from monopoly to a more competitive environment is opening up the space for new market entrants in this sector.
- Increasing customer expectations: Today, renewable energy providers across the globe are facing relentless pressures to maintain an affordable, reliable, and secure supply to the customers owing to the increase in the demand for renewable energy services. As a result, leading companies are facing the need to switch suppliers frequently to meet the demand of the customers while being cost-effective.
Many such factors are forcing companies to leverage the use of spend management solutions. Spend management solutions help companies implement best-in-class procurement platform to enable strategic sourcing, manage contracts, suppliers and increase compliance. These solutions also help firms accomplish a competitive edge over the peers operating in the industry space by assisting them to reduce maverick spends across their business units.
The Business Challenge and Journey
The client, a leading renewable energy provider with business operation spread across the globe, wanted to develop a bespoke spend analysis platform to reduce the time taken for their sourcing and procurement activities. With the help of spend management solution, the client also wanted to implement a procurement platform to enable strategic sourcing, increase compliance, and manage contracts and suppliers across their business units.
The spend management experts at SpendEdge developed a robust market research approach. The research included primary and secondary research coupled with qualitative and quantitative data collection methodology to help the client gain better insights into their purchasing activities.
During the course of this spend management engagement, the renewable energy provider developed a customized spend analysis platform and made full use of the internal data for improving their management skills and procurement expertise. Additionally, the client was able to implement a strategic sourcing roadmap to drive significant savings in a short time and achieve corporate goals.
Fundamental questions answered in this spend management study include
The Results
With the help of the spend management engagement, the client reduced their operating costs for analysis and reports, which meant the enterprise was getting significantly more business value for less investment. This helped them generate savings of over 3 million dollars.