Oxford Instruments, Provider of Technology and Services - Case Study

Oxford Instruments - Digital Supplier Onboarding

AT A GLANCE…

CONTEXT

Provider of high technology products and services for research and industry
Location: HQ in Tubney Wood, Abingdon, England
Employees: over 1,000
Suppliers: over 2,000

CHALLENGE

Specific Regulatory & Supplier Onboarding requirements off the shelf apps couldn’t deliver
Manual Processes in Word/Excel creating admin intensive workloads

SOLUTION

Rapid to Deliver
Approval Workflow speeds up Supplier Onboarding
Flexible to meet specific Regulatory needs

OUTCOMES

Centralised Hub for Real Time Supplier Information
Holistic view of smelters across the Supply Chain
Zero Code future proofs for any further changes

Background

Oxford Instruments plc (OI) is a leading provider of high technology products and services to the world's leading industrial companies and scientific research communities.

Problem Addressed

With increasing CSR and regulatory demands, OI wanted to be able to readily demonstrate compliance across their 2000 suppliers. OI’s manual process, run on Word Documents and Excel Spreadsheets became too cumbersome and admin intensive and there was no simple way of ensuring certifications remained current.

Further, the information requirements were specific to their industry, for example, the OI Supply Chain involves Conflict Minerals, and the Responsible Mineral Initiative (RMI) requires them to declare all smelters used by their suppliers. So, the required due diligence process did not fit the mould of off the shelf Supplier Onboarding tools.

Solution

Softools delivered a Supplier Directory used by OI Employees as a single repository of their Suppliers and holds information to assess supplier risks based on spend and OI’s risk scoring criteria.

Suppliers are invited to the portal to complete/update their information and undergo the due diligence process which includes a Corporate Social Responsibility Questionnaire and Conflict Mineral Smelter Submission.

Softools reduced the administrative load via automated workflow for:

Validating Supplier responses
Internal Approval of Corporate Social Responsibility Questionnaires
Annual Recertification

Automatic aggregation of all the smelters declared by suppliers enables OI to automatically generate an overall smelter list which they need to provide to their customers as part of their RMI obligation.

Outcomes

Demonstrable compliance of suppliers with a process to ensure compliance is maintained
Workflow to manage CSR Approvals and annual certification refresh to maintain compliance
Holistic view of all Smelters used in their Supply Chain
OI have a scalable platform with the flexibility to digitize further processes and have built internal skills to configure Softools enabling them to quickly modify the solution and develop new applications themselves.

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