Summer Internship Report - Malusare Akshay Prakash - PGDM A - GEP Worldwide - v1

Accelerated Sourcing & Synergy Capture
GEP Worldwide
By
Malusare Akshay Prakash
Roll no. 02-27-033
PGDM – Core A 2019-2021
Under the guidance of
Vikram Sharma
Manager - Consulting
GEP Worldwide
Prof. Dr Chandan Singhavi

Faculty of Data Science
SIMSR
K J Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research, Mumbai

August 2020
DECLARATION
I hereby declare, to the best of my knowledge and ability that my work on the Summer
Internship Project title “Accelerated Sourcing” is a genuine research work undertaken by
me. It has not been published anywhere earlier and is prepared after completion of the
Summer Internship Program with GEP Worldwide. In addition to this some of the results
are confidential in nature; detail analysis of the same is not included in this report.

PGDM A – Data Science
Roll No. 02-27-033
CERTIFICATE FROM SUMMER PROJECT GUIDES
THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT MALUSARE AKSHAY PRAKASH, A STUDENT OF THE

PGDM-CORE AT KJ SIMSR, HAS WORKED UNDER OUR GUIDANCE AND
SUPERVISION. THIS SUMMER PROJECT REPORT TITLE “Accelerated Sourcing &
Synergy Capture” HAS THE REQUISITE STANDARD AND TO THE BEST OF OUR
KNOWLEDGE HAS NO PART OF IT BEEN REPRODUCED FROM ANY OTHER
SUMMER PROJECT, MONOGRAPH, REPORT OR BOOK.
FACULTY GUIDE CORPORATE

GUIDE
Prof. Dr Chandan Singhavi Mr. Vikram Sharma
Assistant Professor Manager - Consulting
KJ SIMSR GEP
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I would like to thank my project guide, Mr. Vikram Sharma
(Manager – Consulting, GEP) for his guidance and facilitation along each and every step
of the project. This endeavour would not have been fruitful if not for his constant
encouragement and inputs. Over and above the project, I have been fortunate to learn
many aspects of work ethics from him for which I am grateful.
I would also like to thank Mr. Chris Beitzel and Mr. Dharmit Zaveri for their constant
support and inputs on my work.
I am grateful to all the people on the consulting floor and my fellow interns who shared
their valuable inputs on a daily basis and made the internship period full of knowledge
and fun.
Lastly, I would like to place my gratitude to my faculty guide at SIMSR, Prof Chandan
Singhavi for her guidance.

Post Graduate Diploma in Management K.J. SIMSR, Mumbai
Table of Contents
Executive Summary.............................................................................................................................1
Company Overview.............................................................................................................................2
Service Portfolio....................................................................................................................................3
Awards and recognition.........................................................................................................................5
Strategic Sourcing Process..............................................................................................................6
Understanding Mergers & Acquisition Procurement Synergy....................................................7
Project Details..................................................................................................................................8
Project Objective.........................................................................................................................8
Project Responsibility..................................................................................................................8
Timeline........................................................................................................................................8
Project 1...........................................................................................................................................9
Spend Analysis.............................................................................................................................9
Project 2.........................................................................................................................................11
Payment Term Analysis............................................................................................................11
Project 3.........................................................................................................................................14
Benchmarking Exercise.............................................................................................................14
Project 4.........................................................................................................................................15
Standardized RFP Template.....................................................................................................15
Project 5.........................................................................................................................................17
MRO Sourcing...........................................................................................................................17
Innovation..................................................................................................................................17
Achievement...................................................................................................................................18
Challenges Faced...........................................................................................................................18
Project Insights..............................................................................................................................18
Key Takeaways..............................................................................................................................19
Executive Summary
This report is about my Summer Internship with GEP Worldwide. This is an attempt to know
how the theories can be applied to practical situations. As a student of Post Graduate Diploma
in Management, it is part of the pedagogy to undergo summer project to complement the
classroom leanings. I had the opportunity to intern at GEP Worldwide.
The primary objective of the summer internship project was to look for strategic sourcing
techniques that can lead to significant, sustainable and most importantly measurable cost
reductions (or savings) for an enterprise that directly impact the profitability of the enterprise.
Strategic Sourcing includes a systematic approach to defining a long-term, sustainable
strategy for obtaining goods and services at the lowest possible cost while ensuring optimal
quality and service levels.
In the Strategic sourcing process, the consultant leads and manages opportunities from
category planning through to implementation, including category scoping and kick-off,
category intelligence, strategy development and strategy execution. This includes working
with sourcing analysts, contract management team, spend analysts and technology team on
end to end multi-year, multi-tower, multi-million Euro deals for global customers.
This report outlines all the different studies, research and assignments undertaken to
understand the strategic sourcing process and the various other factors correlated in the
ecosystem. Along with this, the goal also included to propose innovative dashboards for
analysing the supplier spend data and present it to the stakeholders.
1
Summer Internship Report | GEP Worldwide | Accelerated Sourcing & Synergy Capture
Company Overview
GEP is a privately held multinational company that provides consulting, outsourcing and
software to enterprise procurement and supply chain management teams at Global 2000
and Fortune 500 companies worldwide. The company is headquartered in Clark, New
Jersey, USA. GEP has more than 2,500 consulting, outsourcing and technology
professionals worldwide. GEP has 14 offices and operations centers in major regional
market centers across the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Europe
GEP was established in 1999 by Subhash Makhija, Neha Shah, Roopa Gandhi and
Jagadish (“JT”) Turimella to provide sourcing and procurement consulting services to
enterprises in North America and Europe. The company initially focused on providing
procurement consulting services and also developed a number of procurement tools for
eRFX, auction management and supplier management to support its clients, offered
through the Software as a Service (SaaS) model.
Since then, GEP has added procurement outsourcing, supply chain consulting and
outsourcing to its solutions portfolio.
Mission
“Our commitment is to provide our customers with the most creative, most effective and
highest value end-to-end procurement and supply chain solutions. Our strategy to
achieve this goal is simple: via customer centricity. The customer is always at the centre
of our business”.
Core Values
• Customer Delight
Invest entirely in the clients' success
• Value, Results Deliver - period.
• Flexibility
Proactive and flexible in approach
• Meritocracy
Known by talent and ability
• Nurturing
Challenge and support each other to enhance capabilities
• Services and products Consulting services
2
Service Portfolio
GEP’s procurement consulting services include procurement transformation, opportunity

assessment, strategic sourcing, low-cost country sourcing, M&A services, zero-based
budgeting, among others. The company’s supply chain consulting services include
supply chain strategy, supply chain diagnostics and design, capacity planning, risk
management, network optimization and inventory optimization.
Outsourcing services
GEP’s procurement outsourcing services comprise spend analysis, category
management, supply market intelligence, transactions management, tail-spend
management, procurement support services and end-to- end procurement outsourcing.
Supply chain outsourcing services include inventory management, logistics management,
planning & forecasting and supply chain data management.
3
Procurement Software
SMART by GEP is a sourcing and procurement platform developed by GEP on the

Microsoft Azure cloud platform, delivered through the “Platform as a Service” (PaaS)
model. The product is designed for touch and mobile technologies. SMART by GEP’s
core functionality includes spend analysis, sourcing, contract management, supplier
management and procure-
to-pay.
There is clear project process standardized in GEP which facilitate the handover with
strong Quality Assurance
4
Awards and recognition
2017
 GEP named to the IAOP Global Outsourcing 100

 SMART by GEP ranked a Leader in The Forrester WaveTM: eProcurement Report
 SMART by GEP named Customer and Value Leader in Spend Matters SolutionMapTM
2016
 GEP named to the Winner's Circle in HfS Blueprint Report on Procurement as a Service
 SMART by GEP ranked Top Performer in PayStream's Procure-to-Pay Navigator
Report
 Leader in Kennedy Consulting /ALM Research Vanguard for Supply Chain Risk
Management consulting
 Leader in Kennedy Consulting /ALM Research Vanguard for Sourcing & Procurement
Consulting
 Leader and Star Performer on Everest Group’s PEAK MatrixTM of Procurement
Outsourcing Service Providers
2015
 Top Supplier at the EPIC Procurement Excellence Awards 2015

2014
 SMART by GEP ranked among the top 10 spend management software by Business-
Software.com
 “Top 50 Company to Know” in the Spend Matters Almanac
 Ranked among the top four procurement outsourcing providers in Latin America by
Everest Group
 “Most Admired Vendor for BPO Sector” at the BPO Excellence Awards
5
Strategic Sourcing Process
Strategic Sourcing includes a systematic approach to defining a long term, sustainable
strategy for obtaining goods and services at the lowest possible cost while ensuring optimal
quality and service levels
Effective strategic sourcing can lead to significant, sustainable and most importantly
measurable cost reductions (or savings) for an enterprise that directly impact the profitability
of the enterprise
Strategic sourcing is an institutional procurement process that continuously improves and
re-evaluates the purchasing activities of a company. In the services industry, strategic
sourcing refers to a service solution, sometimes called a strategic partnership, which is
specifically customized to meet the client's individual needs. In a production environment, it
is often considered one component of supply chain management.
Below are the process steps and activities carried out for strategic sourcing
Every project needs to go through all the steps to get finally implemented.
6
Understanding Mergers & Acquisition Procurement Synergy
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are made with the goal of improving the company's
financial performance for the shareholders. Two businesses can merge to form one company
that is capable of producing more revenue than either could have been able to independently,
or to create one company that is able to eliminate or streamline redundant processes, resulting
in significant cost reduction. Because of this principle, the potential synergy is examined
during the M&A process. If two companies can merge to create greater efficiency or scale,
the result is what is sometimes referred to as a synergy merge.
Synergy is the concept that the combined value and performance of two companies will be
greater than the sum of the separate individual parts. Synergy is a term that is most
commonly used in the context of mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
7
Project Details
The following section details the project requirements, the timelines, the process followed
during the GEP Worldwide Summer Internship program. The project title is “Accelerated
Sourcing & Synergy Capture”.
Project Objective
1. Accelerated sourcing & Synergy capture

a) Review of current supplier landscape
b) Explore the opportunity of supplier consolidation between the two companies
c) Provide support on sourcing initiatives for a category
d) RFP drafting and analysis
2. Sourcing support for In-flight projects
a) Benchmarking exercise for Payment Term harmonization
b) Prepare strategy for Rapid negotiation
Project Responsibility
 Develop an in-depth understanding of the sourcing/procurement process.

 Spend Analysis, Contract Analysis, Data gathering and maintenance of tracker
 Creation & execution of standardized RFP template.
 Develop basic understanding of pipeline and savings tracker.
Timeline
The entire duration of GEP Worldwide Summer Internship program was six weeks (reduced
from eight weeks due to the global pandemic) . It commenced on May 25th and ended on July
03rd. The entire duration of the internship was divided into blocks, with each block being
8
assigned specific tasks. This ensured that there was a proper timeline being followed and no
ambiguity in terms of the deliverables. The timeline was as shown below:
Project 1
Spend Analysis
Spend Analysis is the process of collecting, cleansing, classifying and analysing expenditure
data with the purpose of decreasing procurement costs, improving efficiency, and monitoring
controls and compliance. It can also be leveraged in other areas of business such as inventory
management, contract management, complex sourcing, supplier management, budgeting,
planning, and product development.
Spend Analysis is often viewed as part of a larger domain known as Spend Management
which incorporates spend analysis, commodity management, industry spend benchmarking,
and strategic sourcing.
Expectations/Objective:
 Collect Item level data
 Analyse spend characteristics
 Analyse historical demand and expected demand
Approach Taken:
Item Level Data Collection Analyze Spend Characteristics

Category – wise and Location – wise spend
Gathering Supplier Item level Spend data
from Stakeholders and Spend Team 01 calculation and analysis
9
Summer Internship Report | GEP Worldwide | Accelerated Sourcing & 02
Synergy Capture
04
03 Historical demand
Dashboard Creation Analyse historical data to understand the
Creating an interactive dashboard for quick trend and eliminate tail spend suppliers
Observations
and easy&analysis
Results:
of the overall spend.
After analysing the total 2019 spend of the acquired company the following observations
were drawn out.
Out of the total spend, the final in scope spend identified and approved by the client was
Indirect Material Spend (IMS).
Freight and distribution spend was to be ignored as mentioned by the client.
There were 6 major categories in which the spend was distributed namely:
 Strategic Services
 Human Resources & Mobility
 Industrial
 Information Technology
 Marketing, Media & Events
 Real Estate
Category-wise Spend Analysis
12.9; 9%
Strategic Service
16.1; 12%
Human Resource & Mobility
14.8; 11% Industrial
Information Technology
Marketing Media & Events
36.2; 26% Real Estate
Uncategorized
37; 27%
13; 9%
7.4; 5%
*All figures in million dollars and only for illustration purpose
10
2019 Spend Overview
300
250 256 113.69
200
Uncategorized
Spend
12.6
150
150
16.1
121.3
100
50
0
IMS & F&D F&D IMS Spend Missing Spend Forecasted IMS
Spend Spend
Project 2
Payment Term Analysis
Payment terms indicate when payments should be made and how. These terms are usually
included in the invoices generated by companies and sent to customers.
There are many reasons why a company would look to extend its payment terms with a
supply base. First reason is extended terms increases a company’s working capital, this
happens by increasing the number of turns a company has on its investment before having to
pay. Extended payment terms and the increase of working capital reduces the need for
corporate loans, and provides more cash stability during the peaks of expense flow. Another
benefit to receiving extended terms from the supply base is the perception of your company’s
stability and supplier trust.
 Analyse Item Level Data
 Understand the difference between document date and posting date
 Calculate the weighted average payment terms
11
Approach Taken:
Observations and Results:

After following the steps, we found the below observations regarding the total spend
based on the Payment Terms.
Different payment terms that were agreed with the suppliers were:
1) Net 90 Days
2) Net 75 Days
3) Net 60 Days
4) Net 45 Days
5) Net 30 Days
6) Net 10 Days, 10% Discount for Immediate Payment
7) Immediate Payment
Net 75 Days and above are considered as High Payment Terms, between Net 45 Days and
Net 60 Days is considered as Medium Payment Terms and below Net 30 Days is considered
as Low Payment Terms.
Based on this basket for the payment terms the following observations were drawn out that
the suppliers with low payment terms contributed almost 84% of the spend amount, those
with medium payment terms contributed almost 11% of the spend amount and those having
high payment terms contributed merely 5% of the spend amount.
12
To showcase this I tried creating an Iceberg model to present during the client meeting to the
VP and get their approval on negotiating with the suppliers for standardization of the
payment terms and extending the payment terms for potential cash improvement.
The potential cash improvement that could be achieved by extending the payment terms is
shown with an example below:
Accounting Efforts:
Last Year Spend by Acquired

Supplier Name Current PT Proposed PT
Company
A 76 Days 96 Days $2 million
Potential Cash Improvement Calculation Methodology

(Proposed PT - Current PT) * (Spend/365)
Impact in this case = (96-76) * (2/365) = $ 0.11 million
The value is divided by 365 days to get yearly cash improvement.

These findings were presented to the client for approval.
13
Project 3
Benchmarking Exercise
 Analysing Client Payment Terms Data
 Identifying the common suppliers between the acquired company and the client by
using the Fuzzy Lookup Technique
 Benchmarking the acquired company’s payment terms and getting it approved

Use of Fuzzy Lookup:
To find out the common suppliers between our client and the acquired company we had the
option of using Vlookup on the gathered data, but the vendor names of both the companies
did not match completely for using Vlookup. So we used a new technique known as Fuzzy
lookup. Fuzzy lookup is a technique that works similar to Vlookup but it does not require the
lookup table to exactly match the variable but instead gives result based on the percentage of
similarity chosen while applying it.
For our calculation of common suppliers we selected the similarity percentage to be 85% and
above. Based on this we found out that there were 37 common suppliers between the acquired
company and our client. The intention of finding the common suppliers was to compare the
Payment Terms provided to the acquired company by the same suppliers. Negotiating for
providing the same payment terms to the acquired company as provided to the client
company.
Procurement Efforts:
Last Year Spend by Acquired

Supplier Name Current PT Proposed PT
Company
A 30 Days 76 Days $2 million
Potential Cash Improvement Calculation Methodology

(Proposed PT - Current PT) * (Spend/365)
Impact in this case = (76-30) * (2/365) = $ 0.25 million
When we combine the efforts from the previous step of using the posting date instead of
document date for calculating the Payment Terms we get a significant potential cash
improvement.
14
Combined effect = $ 0.25 (Procurement Effort) + $ 0.11 (Accounting Effort) = $ 0.36
million
Project 4
Standardized RFP Template
RFP is a formal process which involves reaching out to a pool of suppliers to understand their
offerings in commercial and service terms and to select the most optimal sources that fit with
the cost, quality and service related goals of the business.
RFP is a frequently used approach wherein competition within supplier pool is leveraged to
obtain the best possible commercial outcome
Creating a standardized RFP Template with a supplier Overview dashboard

From this project I understood the different components of an RFP which are shown in the
below diagram
15
After studying and leveraging different RFP templates used by other teams of GEP for their
respective clients, I was able to create a new standardized template that can be used for our
newly acquired client by incorporating some new features which are shown below.
Feature 1: Inclusion of date picker function in the cover letter to easily access the calendar
and calculate the week number that the RFP was published in.
Feature 2: Using Macro functions to create a supplier overview dashboard for quick analysis
of the number of items covered by the supplier, bid value of the proposal and top 5 items by
value in the suppliers proposal.
This dashboard gives a quick idea for pricing analysis which would help in supplier
shortlisting.
Once the supplier shortlisting is done the next process includes negotiation with the suppliers
and awarding business and implementation.
This automated supplier overview dashboard will be helpful and critical for strong
negotiations and optimal decision making.
16
Project 5
MRO Sourcing
The MRO spend category encompasses a multitude of products, services and suppliers that
are crucial to your day-to-day operations. With a large decentralized user base and millions of
items and transactions, the MRO spend category has a high opportunity for cost savings
through strategic sourcing expertise and process.
 Provide support on sourcing initiatives for MRO category
 Detailed spend analysis of MRO category
 Identify suppliers based on spend for outreach
 Interview the suppliers to gather contract and invoice documents
 Publish RFP to interviewed suppliers
Observations and Results

 Identified 85 suppliers from the MRO category based on the spend which was
between $100K - $300K
 Reached out to 40 suppliers to gather contract and invoice documents to understand
the terms of acquisitions.
 Published RFP to the interviewed suppliers to get the proposal for the items to be
sourced.
*All figures are in million dollars and only for illustration purpose
Through a comprehensive data collection and normalization process, you gain a thorough
understanding of your current MRO requirements from both a qualitative and quantitative
standpoint. Not only does this provide more visibility into your MRO spend, but it provides a
17
cleansed, line item-level detail data set for you to quickly understand and evaluate savings
opportunities present within the spend.
Achievement
Finally, by the end of the internship I could accomplish not just quality deliverables
submitted on time but going a step ahead – the templates that I had built for RFP and
dashboard for supplier overview and Interactive dashboard for supplier Spend analysis were
taken up for internal approval for use henceforth in place of existing workbooks due to
enhanced diagnostic summary and automation wherever possible.
I believe that it was a great achievement for me and the team that my efforts were scalable.
Challenges Faced
Below are some of the challenges faced during the SIP:
 Access to information
Information had to be gathered from various sources . As an intern I had limited access to
the online resources of the company since it was a virtual internship. Also due to
confidential nature of information and required documents, I was unable to get complete
information. But the team had made sure to not let that become a major hindrance in my
learning and experience.
 Networking
Internships are a great way to network with experts in the industry. Despite the virtual
nature of the internship, the whole Talent Acquisition team and my mentor and buddy
made sure that I did not miss this opportunity which I am grateful to them. But still I
could feel a difference it would have been if the pandemic did not affect the internship.
Project Insights
This project was focused on understanding the Strategic Sourcing process. Strategic sourcing
by no means is an easy task as it might seem so initially. It might look pretty straightforward
on paper but in reality it is daunting task. It was rightly told by mentor that a sourcing
strategy grows one supplier at a time since every supplier is so different from each other
telling a different time that no two projects will be same.
18
In addition to improving compliance and reducing cycle times, performing detailed spend
analysis helps companies find new areas of savings that previously went untapped, and hold
on to past areas of savings that they have already negotiated.
Key Takeaways
Below are the key takeaways of the SIP
 Strategic Sourcing Process

 Detailed understanding of Payment Terms and its impact
 Opportunity Assessment
 Contract Analysis
 Spend Analysis
 RFP process and supplier shortlisting
 Supplier Negotiation process
 Merger and Acquisition Synergy capture
 MRO sourcing
19

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Accelerated Sourcing & Synergy Capture

Under the guidance of

Prof. Dr Chandan Singhavi

K J Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research, Mumbai

Malusare Akshay Prakash

THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT MALUSARE AKSHAY PRAKASH, A STUDENT OF THE

FACULTY GUIDE CORPORATE

Malusare Akshay Prakash

GEP’s procurement consulting services include procurement transformation, opportunity

SMART by GEP is a sourcing and procurement platform developed by GEP on the

 GEP named to the IAOP Global Outsourcing 100

 Top Supplier at the EPIC Procurement Excellence Awards 2015

1. Accelerated sourcing & Synergy capture

 Develop an in-depth understanding of the sourcing/procurement process.

Item Level Data Collection Analyze Spend Characteristics

Category-wise Spend Analysis

*All figures in million dollars and only for illustration purpose

250 256 113.69

*All figures in million dollars and only for illustration purpose

Observations and Results:

*All figures in million dollars and only for illustration purpose

Last Year Spend by Acquired

Potential Cash Improvement Calculation Methodology

The value is divided by 365 days to get yearly cash improvement.

Observations and Results:

Last Year Spend by Acquired

A 30 Days 76 Days $2 million

Potential Cash Improvement Calculation Methodology

Observations and Results:

Observations and Results

Below are some of the challenges faced during the SIP:

Below are the key takeaways of the SIP

 Strategic Sourcing Process

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