Consus Global: Source-to-Pay for SMEs

“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you know what they need before they realize it themselves.” When a loyal client went on to state the outcomes his business achieved out of its association with Consus Global, this statement seemed to be spot on. From making them realise the need for e-sourcing to enabling their spend analysis capability, and even managing their e-sourcing events until they learnt to be independent on the platform, he had a lot on his list to back his faith in Consus Global.

In a market where most solution providers were focusing on addressing the sourcing needs of the big players, Consus emerged early as an enabler for the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and this has been a key differentiator for the company ever since its inception. Its relentless go-to-market approach was also key in gaining market share, first in India, and then in Malaysia and today present in eight countries including Singapore, US, Canada, Philippines, Colombia, UAE, Uganda & Australia.

Consus Global assists its clients in achieving significant bottom-line savings and streamlining their Source to Pay Processes with a combination of cloud based S2P solutions and their services around the same, gaining process control, compliance, transparency and productivity across the end-to-end source-to-pay value chain.

“The vision at Consus has always been to be a one-stop service provider for all the customer needs”

Consus defines its edge by not just through the selection-to-implementation cycle for S2P technologies, but in its use. Consus clients see it as an incubator, a catalyst to embed and institutionalise the technology-enabled S2P processes. To ensure the same, the firm co-locates with the clients to run the technology with them; majority of the team are both category as well as technology specialists. Indeed, for a boutique company with 200 staff, Consus has experience across 10,000 categories and 20+ sectors.

Consus also addresses the need for collaboration between the buyers and suppliers through its Supplier Enablement services – a true differentiator for this SI provider of cloud-based solutions. To drive savings from contract compliance and invoice automation means a holistic inclusion of not just the top 20 percent of suppliers, but the entire supplier eco-system. “Many of our customers have told us stories about their earlier e-procurement failures as they found it most challenging to on-board suppliers. At Consus, we know that once the suppliers are on-boarded, buyers show their full participation, and the savings follow through,” adds Madhuri Govilkar, VP & GM, South East Asia, Consus Global.

Team Consus also assists clients with spend analysis. The firm collects, cleanses, enriches and classifies spend data, and then scrutinizes it for opportunities to save, consolidate and rationalise.

Ever since the commencement of its procurement business in 2010, Consus has expanded its reach to one or two new territories with every year.

Santanu Mitra, VP & COO, Consus Global adds, “Consus has expanded to different territories like Australia, Middle East, North America, Africa, South East Asia, LATAM and has gradually transformed into a global company today.” Over the years, “Consus has learnt to strike a delicate balance in both challenging and adapting to procurement cultural norms across countries – from focus on cost-savings via transactional tendering, to appreciating the longer term value of good, clean spend data and insights, and process automation, controls and transparency,” adds Manjari Mehta, VP & GM for the Australia and New Zealand region.

Consus’ growth has come from nurturing both customers and partner relationships. It partners with the leading technology firms, including Ivalua, with over 40 clients gain in the last financial year. Stating the reasons that have continuously strengthened this partnership, Shantanu Bhowmick says, “Their management is committed to growing these markets with us. The product is best-in-class and I think Ivalua is right there at the top, given its configurability. Having worked with several solutions in the market, one thing we have learnt is to look under the hood and Ivalua single code base solution simply fits. One of the other things that we quickly realized is that while there have been several advancements in the S2P space, there is a big void in terms of adoption of the basic technology in certain markets (both developed and developing). Therefore our focus is clearly to get such clients up to speed, leverage the power of S2P technology through our services. We continue to be the catalysts to SMEs who are not exposed to what these technologies can do for their business.”

Having coupled its expertise with the capabilities assured by these partnerships, Consus has garnered a client base of over 200 customers across 10 countries. Their clients span across 30 industries from $100M - $5B in annual revenue. Among these, Shantanu considers its association with Piramal Glass, a leading producer and supplier of glass packaging solutions for pharmaceutical and perfumery industries defining and productive.“In identifying and realizing our S2P vision, Consus Global has stayed with us, not just in assisting us in selecting and implementing our first cloud-based e-sourcing solution but in coaching us on how to use it. They have also helped us to embed it, realise cost-savings from it, in migrating our data, and gradually guiding us to full S2O maturity,” elaborates Samit Datta, President & Head of Global Supply Chain, Piramal Glass.

The organization further plans to focus on two key areas – geographic expansion beyond APAC and developing technology Centres of Excellence (COE).“The vision at Consus has always been to be a one-stop service provider for all the customer needs. To address global demand, the team was restructured to establish the Technology Centre of excellence,” delineates Gourish Birajdar, VP& CTO. The objective for developing its technology COE remains knowledge sharing, which is the key element amongst all its regions for strongly driving the company.

Further elaborating their expansion plans, Smriti Kochar, the company’s VP & GM, India & Middle East, proudly adds, “We are also looking to make our foray into the government and public sector and work with different governments and PSUs to streamline their procurement processes. We have made a significant headway already and will be making some announcements soon.”

Shantanu prides himself for not just growing customers – but growing its leadership and team capability – “Most of our leadership, and much of our staff have been with us since the inception,” he notes.

“In identifying and realizing our S2P vision, Consus Global has stayed with us, not just in assisting us in selecting and implementing our first cloud-based e-sourcing solution but in coaching us on how to use it. They have also helped us to embed it, realise cost-savings from it, in migrating our data, and gradually guiding us to full S2O maturity,” elaborates Samit Datta, President & Head of Global Supply Chain, Piramal Glass.