Background
Peñoles began operations in 1887 as a mining company and now has integrated operations in Mexico for exploration, mining, metallurgy and chemicals. They are the world’s top producer of refined silver, metallic bismuth and sodium sulphate and the leading Latin American producer of gold, refined lead and zinc.
Challenge
As part of a re-engineering initiative that started in 1998, Peñoles was looking to implement a new ERP system at all their business units and develop an ebusiness strategy that included:
- Adding a Buying application that would streamline their Procure-to-Pay processes
- Selecting an e-marketplace that would support their supplier management strategy and reduce costs and cycle times with respect to e-procurement
- Selecting a middleware for exchange of e-business transactions outside their firewall
Solution
Peñoles selected the PeopleSoft ERP system in 2000 and implemented the Financials (General Ledger, Payables, Receivables, Asset Management, Projects,and Expenses), Distribution (Purchasing, Inventory, Order Management, and Billing) and Human Resources modules, utilizing a Sybase database v12.5. They then proceeded to evaluate several buying applications (PeopleSoft eProcurement, Ariba Buyer, Adquira, Artikos, Marrakech and GeTech), middleware (webMethods, BEA WebLogic and Tibco) and e-marketplaces (Quadrem, Ariba Commerce Services Network and GTW). Early in 2002, they decided on the following combination:
- Buying application: PeopleSoft
- eProcurement E-marketplace: Quadrem
- Middleware: BEA WebLogic
Results
Peñoles has made their procurement process more efficient following the deployment of the Quadrem solution set. The cost per transaction has dropped from USD $ 36 to USD $ 13 and the cycle time per transaction from an average of 4.5 hours to 1.5 hours. There has been a reduction in support staff as well and the
solution is currently supported by one functional and one technical resource.