ALTANA

Knowledge transfer is essential for the success of a company—not only when experienced employees are retiring and it’s necessary to preserve and pass on their many years of expertise. Chemical company ALTANA started early on to consolidate the knowledge of its purchasing department in a central location. To do this, the company is relying on a graph database, Microsoft Azure, and PRODYNA, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network. The EMPOWER platform solution not only minimizes time and effort, increases performance, and enables price predictions with a deviation of only 5 percent, it also brings more transparency to sustainability data in the supply chains.

The challenge: Fragmented knowledge spread across 35 ERP systems

When the purchasing team at

go into meetings with their suppliers, it’s crucial that they have all relevant information such as supply volumes and other benchmark data at their fingertips. The same goes for purchasing management when company-wide data must be compiled to generate overviews of suppliers or price development. These overviews are the basis for optimizing both the business and its products—for instance, when the company is looking to exchange one raw material for another with a smaller carbon footprint.