Background
Headquartered in Brazil, Vale, is the world’s largest iron ore and pellets producer and exporter,
and the largest mining company in South America. It operates in 18 countries across five continents.

Challenge
A large Oracle customer (Oracle Financials 11.i, DB version 11.5.9), VALE needed an integrated electronic solution for supplier communication in order to address its volume of transactions. VALE found that they needed a robust Internet-based infrastructure to support concurrent access by suppliers to the supplier modules hosted in their environment. VALE needed to improve supplier support and enhance visibility and connectivity with Logistics providers. VALE’s business case review indicated that Quadrem was their best solution due to the following key factors:

•   low cost
•   supplier support and on-boarding expertise
•   technical support
•   flexibility and development speed with regard to technology adjustments and enhancements
•   complete suite of solutions that also catered to services, logistics, financial services, master data synchronization etc.
•   full integration with strategic suppliers

Solution
A new reliable and scaleable interface with Quadrem was built using webMethods 6.1 and xCBL-based document exchange using an HTTPS connection with two-way SSL and SOAP protocol for messaging. Error handling, message acknowledgements, document storage, expediting, reporting and other process and document
delivery controls were established. Quadrem and VALE agreed to a multiphased enablement plan. The strategy for each phase was to deploy a simple solution with a small group of suppliers, obtain feedback and then follow that up with a second round of adjustments which would be deployed to all suppliers.

Results
In 2005, Quadrem onboarded more than 6,000 VALE suppliers using Quadrem’s premier hosted supplier application. These 6,000 suppliers were all enabled and transacting with VALE in less than two months. Quadrem’s expertise in rapid onboarding, combined with its improvement of VALE’s P2P process is generating tremendous efficiencies as significant volume flows between VALE and this supplier community. The volumes of Source-to-Settle transactions are forecast to quadruple from over 800,000 to more than 5.1 million by the end of the implementation. The number of suppliers transacting with VALE in an automated fashion is planned to double from 9,000 to 18,000 once services documents have been enabled.

VALE is on track to use electronic transactions for 100% of materials and services purchases. To demonstrate VALE’s commitment to the Quadrem eMarketplace and underscore the success, they have signed a five-year agreement with Quadrem for e-procurement, catalogue and e-sourcing solutions. VALE is also looking for automating and improving other areas that enable excellence in their supply chain management practices using solutions for Quadrem – logistics visibility (implementing), financial settlement for suppliers (QuickPay – evaluating), vendor data synchronization (implementing) and vendor ERP-level integration (QuickConnect and DirectConnect) (implementing, many in production).