ProcurementintheMid-Market
How do you or your team reconcile order confirmations?
A master’s thesis by WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management on the state of digitalization in mid-market procurement. We are looking for practitioners to share their experience.
About Our Study
As part of our master’s thesis at the Chair of Logistics Management at WHU, supervised by Prof. Dr. Stefan Spinler, we (Johann Wallrabe and Till Wöst) are examining how mid-market companies in Germany organize their procurement, what role digitalization and AI play today, and where concrete action is needed. The study combines an industry overview with the development of a prototype based on the results. Our interview partners come from more than ten different industries – from mechanical engineering and plant construction to textile technology, building materials, infrastructure, and waste management.
We speak with managing directors, procurement managers, and process owners from the manufacturing mid-market. We are not interested in textbook processes, but in how things actually work at your company. What works well? Where does it cost time and nerves? Have you already thought about digitalization or AI in procurement?
In return, we share our findings from over 40 expert interviews and give you an insight into the prototype that emerged from this research. All participants will receive the complete study results upon completion, as well as access to the prototype if interested. We are also happy to visit you on-site and look at the process together.
The Typical Mid-Market Procurement Process
Does this sound familiar? We have identified four key friction points:
Demand & Ordering
Demand is identified, supplier selected, order placed – via ERP, email, or internal coordination.
- Order suggestions from the ERP almost always need manual optimization – wrong quantities, missing consolidation across suppliers, minimum order values not considered.
- Five different demands from the same supplier are placed as five individual orders – instead of bundled into one.
- Replenishment lead times in the system are outdated: “The system says ten days, in reality it’s six weeks.”
Order Confirmation
The confirmation arrives – as PDF, as a hand-corrected scan, or sometimes just an “Okay” via email.
- Suppliers confirm in different units than ordered – meters instead of pieces, packaging units instead of individual items, kilos instead of pieces.
- Suppliers print the order, write something on it by hand, scan it, and send it back.
- Item descriptions differ: “Galvanized screw 10cm” becomes “10cm screws galvanized.”
- The supplier article number is missing from the confirmation, or the internal article number is missing.
- Special discounts appear as free text in the header, then show up as a separate line in the confirmation.
Delivery + Invoice Receipt & Verification
Invoice arrives, DMS extracts data. Then the three-way match: invoice, order, delivery note.
- Invoices often arrive before the order confirmation has even been checked.
- 95% of delivery notes still arrive on paper and end up somewhere in a folder.
- Invoice verification by project managers is delayed – accounting waits because the department can’t keep up.
- Media break: invoice in DATEV, order in ERP, delivery note in a paper folder – three systems, no reconciliation.
Approval, Posting & Payment
Accounting posts the invoice, payment is triggered, invoice is archived.
- Signature requirements and approval levels: above certain order values, management must sign. Best case one day, worst case a week.
- Four-eyes principle requires a manual workflow that often runs via email or verbal request.
- Media breaks between DMS, ERP, and payment system – data is entered multiple times.
In our interviews, we keep hearing the same picture: the procurement process works – but it costs unnecessary time and nerves. Much is still manual, documents are exchanged as PDFs, and end-to-end transparency is missing. It doesn’t have to stay that way.
What We’ve Found So Far
Master data is the foundation – and very often a problem.
Wrong replenishment lead times, missing supplier article numbers, outdated prices. Without clean master data, neither automation nor meaningful analysis is possible – yet almost everywhere, there’s no time for consistent maintenance.
Price maintenance consumes a disproportionate amount of time.
Several companies described that updating purchase prices runs via Excel VLOOKUP, copy-paste, and manual comparisons. Creeping price increases go unnoticed – until the year-end calculation no longer adds up.
Project-based companies have it especially hard.
Lot size 1, no framework contracts possible, every project different. Classic procurement tools fail because they’re designed for serial production. And yet, every order confirmation must be checked, every invoice reconciled, and every price maintained.
ERP systems are there, but often outdated or undersized.
The interviews reveal extreme diversity: SAP, ProAlpha, Sage X3, EasyWinArt, Navision, custom-built systems, and many more. Many are 15 to 20 years old. One interview partner: “Our SAP is from 1998. It causes more harm than good now.”
Procurement staff want to offload repetitive tasks, not full automation.
Across the board, interview partners said full automation is not desired. They want an assistant that handles the tedious 80 percent, so they can focus on negotiation, supplier relationships, and strategic decisions. The final decision should remain with the human.
Supplier relationships beat price. Always!
Almost every interview partner emphasized: reliability, delivery performance, and a personal contact are often more important than the lowest price. Those who know their supplier and maintain a partnership get a short-notice special solution in emergencies – no algorithm can replace that.
Based on these findings and recurring friction points, a research prototype has emerged.
ProcurementHub – Born from Research
A tool that emerged from the research
Based on the insights from our interviews and the analysis of existing processes, we developed ProcurementHub. We asked ourselves how to cost-effectively support procurement without launching yet another six-figure digitalization project. ProcurementHub shows what the first step of procurement digitalization can look like – without disrupting the existing process.
- Automatic line-item matching between order, order confirmation, delivery note, and invoice
- Detection of unit deviations and automatic conversion
- Highlighting creeping price increases via configurable thresholds
- Overview of all orders per supplier with price development over time
We’d be happy to show you the prototype in a conversation. Get in touch
ProcurementHub is a research prototype by WHU. It is not a finished software solution, but a tool with which we validate together with practice partners how procurement in the mid-market can be concretely digitalized.
Frequently Asked Questions from Practice
Your data stays with you. We understand that your procurement data doesn’t belong in anyone else’s hands. That’s why ProcurementHub was designed from the start to run entirely on your own servers – without dependency on external cloud providers. No third party sees your data, no vendor can suddenly change the terms. Alternatively, we offer a GDPR-compliant cloud solution on German infrastructure if a local installation is not desired. In both cases: your data is processed and stored exclusively in Germany.
On-Premise
Model on your servers – no data leaves your premises
German Cloud
GDPR-compliant
Who’s Behind This
We are Johann Wallrabe and Till Wöst, master’s students at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management. Our thesis at the Chair of Logistics Management (Prof. Dr. Stefan Spinler) connects academic research with practical product development. As part of this research, we built ProcurementHub ourselves in just a few weeks – based on real interview feedback from over 40 conversations with procurement practitioners. We believe that the mid-market doesn’t need a moon landing, but pragmatic tools that work in everyday life.
Selected Quotes
“We print the invoice, then it goes through management in paper form. One employee spends 365 days a year just filing.”
– Procurement Manager, manufacturing mid-market
Let’s Talk
Whether as an interview partner or with interest in our findings – we look forward to the exchange.
We’ll Come to You
Half a day, no preparation needed – we’ll look at how things work at your company together. We sit alongside, ask questions, and understand your process firsthand. This is the most valuable exchange for us – and completely non-binding for you.
Direct Contact
A conversation takes about 15 to 20 minutes and can take place by phone, video, or in person at your location. We adapt to your schedule. All participants receive the complete study results upon completion, as well as personal access to the prototype.