With almost 900,000 members, FNV is the largest trade union in the Netherlands. The organisation was struggling with an inefficient procurement process that lacked insight into current commitments, procurement expenditure and budgets. The ERP platform that aimed to support the P2P process was not perceived as user-friendly and its capabilities were limited. This led to an increasing workload in the procurement department and inefficiencies in the process. The organisation was also struggling with a proliferation of suppliers.

Above all, FNV was looking for a user-friendly solution that would make the entire procurement process – from order, approval and receipt registration to payment of invoices – simpler and more efficient. The new system would have to significantly reduce processing times and manual actions in order and invoice processing. Purchasing contracts would also need to be able to be stored and managed centrally, with invoices directly linked to them. In this way, FNV aimed to gain better control of expenses, contracts and budgets, while professionalising the entire ordering process.

The Spendlinq team was (and still is) the driving force behind the preliminary research, the selection, implementation and rollout of the new system. The implementation is still in progress, with a phased go-live. The project included supervision of the selection procedure – from longlist to final supplier – and contracting support. In addition, Spendlinq was responsible for designing and defining the new processes, as well as coordinating with stakeholders, users and the software supplier to arrive at the optimum system setup. Spendlinq also provided training for key users and end users, with a specific focus on change management.