Building from the ground up
It's safe to say, Gecina knows real estate. Gecina is a real estate company which owns, manages and develops a real estate portfolio of about 20 billion Euros.
With many moving parts to manage, Gecina needed to centralise its buying activities so in 2019, Gecina's Purchasing department was formally created at the Paris headquarters. Its main responsibilities are to manage services and maintenance tenders across the group's entire portfolio, and renovation work on residences and offices.
This marked the beginning of Market Dojo's long term, transformative partnership with Gecina. Five years on from the initial Market Dojo Sourcing implementation, we caught up with Anne Paran, Acheteur Travaux et Maintenance (Works and Maintenance Buyer), to find out how Market Dojo continues to deliver value to Gecina.
* All quotes are translated from French and edited for clarity.
Challenges
How it all started
Like many Procurement departments, Gecina's RFPs were originally managed by emails and spreadsheets, and in some cases the suppliers' offers were received in sealed envelopes.
However, it soon became clear to the team that the process needed to be simplified by leveraging e-sourcing tools, and to provide greater traceability and visibility of the data for future audits and risk mitigation. Staying true to Gecina's ethical principles, they also wanted to establish a process that treated all participants in a fair, transparent manner.
Finding the right solution
Gecina went out to market to find a modular, best-of-breed solution that would be agile to the team's evolving needs. Market Dojo Sourcing was ultimately selected for its ease of use, rapid deployment and outstanding customer support.
What Our Clients Say
It's allowed us to save a huge amount of time.
Solution
Success through simplicity
Gecina's success with the solution is largely a result of Market Dojo Sourcing's simplicity and ease of use, ensuring good adoption with the team and across departments.
"It [Market Dojo Sourcing] was adopted easily for two reasons. First of all, the simplicity of the tool. It's not a complicated portal. There are not 10 menus, sub-menus, sub-criteria, etc."
She goes on to explain, "In addition, for our process we use the duplication feature which allows us to reuse tenders. As soon as I have made a first consultation and set up a tender, I replicate it; I adapt it to my new consultation; I change the documents, my specs and then it's fine. It's very easy to use."
Effortless implementation
"The advantage of Market Dojo is that it is easy to set up and does not require you to connect with other tools. We met Market Dojo in September, and by November, we had launched the first tenders. It is very easy to deploy and it's still a big advantage today."
Anne goes on to explain that adoption was relatively fast as Market Dojo Sourcing made it possible to really facilitate project management and be a valuable tool for internal stakeholders and clients.
Results
A true time saver
"It's allowed us to save a huge amount of time, I have everything in the same place so I don't have to check my emails for example, 'Did I send it to the right person?' It keeps my history organised."
"There is this real simplicity and benefit of verification by having all the files, all the information, in the same place linked to a tender."
Improving supplier interactions
"We do see a difference depending on the size of the supplier company. If they are large organisations who are more used to responding to tenders with fairly structured Purchasing teams, they are already used to using digitised processes so are very comfortable with the tool."
Anne goes on to say, "Compared to emails, the advantage is that it projects a certain maturity of Gecina's Purchasing team, compared to, let's say, 'the old-fashioned approach'."
Greater transparency
"We use Market Dojo when we have debriefing and offer analysis meetings with our internal clients, and we can give access to our Audit department if they need to verify something from time to time."
Key lessons learnt
We asked Anne for any advice and tips she would give to someone who is just starting a digital transformation project in sourcing.
"My advice for any Purchasing team that is still using emails and Excel files is to evolve. Move to a solution that allows all the information to be stored in the same place including historical data—it's a real time saver."
"By using Market Dojo Sourcing to digitise Gecina's tender management, it also allows the Procurement team to reflect a certain professionalism—it enables us to formalise our processes, to show that we have a real method and rigour in the management of our procurement projects."
And lastly...
Would you recommend Market Dojo?
"If you want to digitise your tender management via an easy-to-use tool from a company where both the Customer Support team and the Sales team listens to the customer, don't hesitate! It definitely has worked for us."