How a retail chain changed phone-and-email requisition process to a fully automated & traceable procure-to-delivery

Project overview

About the client

Our client is one of the largest supermarket chains in Eastern Europe. This engagement focused on its Equipment category — purchasing, contracting, and delivery of store and warehouse equipment across the network.

APSentra, together with our trusted partners, helped a retailer digitalize and automate its equipment procurement process, from requisition to delivery.

Challenge

Our process diagnostic mapped requests for equipment as they actually moved — through phone calls and emails, with no shared system of record and found risk exposure at every stage of the purchase.

This led to several issues:

• No standard purchase request form, so requests often arrived missing required information
• No regulated process for initiating a purchase, and no single database of requests
• Requests came in through mixed channels — phone and email — with no unified intake
• No structured approval workflow for purchase requests
• Requesters had no way to check request status without contacting the buyer directly
• Requests could get “lost” between departments with no tracking
• No workload analytics on buyers, and no searchable archive of completed purchases
• Contract terms were reconciled against tender results manually, with no automatic data transfer
• No delivery registry — supplier delivery commitments were tracked verbally, with no way to confirm dates, connect a shipment to its original request, or analyze on-time performance

Our consulting approach

We mapped the equipment category against our standard four-process automation model — initiation, supplier selection, contracting, order & delivery and then built the target-state design and automation roadmap process by process:

• Process mapping — As-Is documentation of the full equipment purchase lifecycle across four stages: initiation, supplier selection, contracting, and order & delivery
  
• Requisition redesign — standardized, mandatory-field purchase request forms pulled from a shared item catalog, replacing free-text phone and email requests
  
• Sourcing-to-contract redesign — a data flow specification ensuring tender results (items, quantities, technical specifications, pricing) transfer directly into contracts and orders without manual re-entry
  
• Delivery control design — a delivery calendar model giving real-time visibility into expected shipments, supplier on-time performance, and full order-to-request traceability
  
• Automation roadmap — a phased plan for rolling the redesigned process into the procurement platform, with before/after time-and-risk metrics to track adoption

Deliverables

• Procurement consulting & digital procurement automation
• As-Is process maps across initiation, supplier selection, contracting, and order & delivery
• Standardized requisition form specification
• Tender-to-contract data flow design
• Delivery visibility / supplier scorecard model
• Automation roadmap with before/after time-and-risk metrics

Business impact

Mapping the equipment category against our four-process automation model exposed exactly where manual handoffs were causing lost requests, mismatched contract terms, and unconfirmed deliveries — and gave our client a sequenced roadmap to close each gap.

Store and warehouse teams gained self-service visibility into their equipment orders, while procurement leadership gained the data needed to manage supplier performance and buyer workload.

Results

Mandatory-field requests

The redesigned process blocks submission of incomplete purchase requests, cutting back-and-forth clarification.

A single system of record

Every equipment request, tender, contract, and order now lives in one searchable, paperless archive.

Automatic contract population

Tender-approved pricing, quantities, and supplier data now flow into contracts without manual re-entry.

Delivery visibility

A shared delivery calendar replaces verbal confirmations, with full traceability from request to shipment.

Workload and status transparency

Requesters track their own request status, and managers get analytics on buyer workload and processing time.