Online shopping is enjoying an unprecedented boom – just a few clicks and the object of our desires (or just a fridge full of groceries) is on its way to our door, without us even needing to get up off the sofa. Online procurement – the online shopping of the business world – has been steadily increasing in the maritime industry too, as ship owners look for ways to streamline their operations and digitalise supply chains. At Wärtsilä we offer a range of ways to purchase spare parts – and we can help you find the right one for you.
Traditionally, procurement was a long, slow process. There were a lot of forms that needed filling in by hand and spare parts codes had to be cross-referenced multiple times to ensure mistakes weren’t made. Moving from manual to automated processes was an obvious response – saving time on procurement meant saving money, not to mention reducing the risk of costly human errors.
Online procurement (or e-procurement) has been around for over 20 years, and after a slow start it’s now being used by the majority of companies for common business-to-business processes such as purchase orders, invoices and bulk shipping. The number-one benefit is better efficiency – by removing paper-based processes you can streamline and speed up purchasing. Transparency is also improved because every step can be tracked online, giving better visibility over the whole process. Another big benefit is that speeding up the process means your teams can focus on strategic issues instead of being weighed down by mountains of paperwork.
At Wärtsilä, we’ve seen more and more of our customers ordering online, with numbers growing significantly each year. We have long been available for online orders, support and advice through our webstore at Wärtsilä Online, a 24/7 service that provides an easy way to check the price and availability of spare parts, request quotations, place orders and save your shopping cart to review later. This procurement method is available for all our customers and requires nothing more than login credentials, making it an easy choice for customers without procurement systems.
At Wärtsilä, we’ve seen more and more of our customers ordering online, with numbers growing significantly each year.
We’re also integrating our service into the industry’s most commonly used procurement platforms, systems and processes. Marine enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and e-procurement platforms work to streamline internal processes and reduce operational costs across fleets. Supplier interaction such as requests, price checks and purchase orders can all be made using simple digitalised workflows, giving a fast, easy and automated route to purchasing.
In recent years, Wärtsilä has taken steps to simplify maintenance planning for our products and solutions. As a result, all necessary manuals and catalogues are available online for the benefit of our customers. Now the focus is on simplifying spare parts procurement with the help of digitalisation. New integrated B2B procurement possibilities promise to bring speed, automation and reliability to the spare parts procurement process.
To help remove unnecessary manual steps and make the most out of customers’ existing systems, Wärtsilä is now fully integrated into four e-procurement platforms, Shipserv, Seaproc, Kinnetik and Procureship, and into the procurement modules of four fleet management systems, Sertica, MariApps, Mespas and Star Information Systems – with more systems being added all the time. This direct integration simplifies the purchase process and makes it even smoother, speeding up the time it takes to reply to quote requests and purchase orders and automating several key processes, which reduces the risk of manual errors and non-conformities. Full integration also increases transparency across the whole purchase process.
To help remove unnecessary manual steps and make the most out of customers’ existing systems, Wärtsilä is now fully integrated into four e-procurement platforms and into the procurement modules of four fleet management systems.
By helping customers to buy from Wärtsilä using their own procurement systems we can offer an even better customer experience. "These new integration capabilities bring big benefits in terms of enabling our customers to buy their Wärtsilä spare parts using the e-procurement platform they are already familiar with,” points out Outi Korhonen, General Manager, Digital Sales Development, Wärtsilä. “This simplifies the process and reduces manual work and errors, giving customers a better overall experience.”
For customers using other procurement platforms or systems we offer a PunchOut catalogue that gives you a direct link to Wärtsilä Online from within your procurement solution. You can find up-to-date information on stock availability and price and then smoothly transfer items in your Wärtsilä shopping cart back to your procurement system for approval and purchase. This method eliminates the need for a quotation or any manual entry as all price and availability data is directly available.
Wherever you choose to buy Wärtsilä spare parts, we aim to make it as fast, easy and convenient as possible. Get in touch to find out if your marine ERP program or preferred e-procurement platform is already integrated, or for help finding the simplest procurement option for your business. As always, we are here to help!
