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MeRLIN Sourcing has partnered with Protiviti, to enable Procurement Transformation across Middle East with MeRLIN.

May 2022, Dubai, United Arab Emirates: According to the International Data Corporation, the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) region is expected to spend up to USD 40 billion on digital transformation initiatives by 2022. In keeping with these new technology disruptions, Protiviti Member Firm for the Middle East Region, a global business consulting firm has partnered with IT consultancy MeRLIN Sourcing to enable eProcurement through MeRLIN Sourcing’s strategic sourcing solution MeRLIN (Material eResource Linked Information Network). 

The agreement was signed by Vetri Selvan, CEO and Managing Partner, RheinBrucke and Arindam De, Deputy CEO and Managing Director, Protiviti Member Firm for the Middle East Region. The event was attended by leadership from RheinBrucke and Protiviti including H.E. Mohamad Hassan Abdullah Alnoman, Chairman of RheinBrucke Middle East.

Protiviti will be the strategic advisor and partner for the MeRLIN platform in the Middle East market and the team will deliver projects, helping them accelerate procurement digitalization and achieve effective ROI. In addition, Protiviti will also be the cloud integration partner for MeRLIN.

Speaking on the sidelines of the event, H.E. Jamal Bin Saif Al Jarwan, Secretary General of UAE International Investment Council (UAEIC) said, “This partnership will enable both parties to deliver value and improve the performances of both manufacturing and public sector enterprises while they continue to adopt spend management solutions to help them gain a competitive advantage by managing complexity, improving supplier relationships, and ensuring supply chain reliability.”

H.E. Alnoman said, “The partnership between Protiviti and MeRLIN Sourcing will provide value to businesses, as we are witnessing an upward trend in the market where organizations are attempting to reduce their technology costs and focusing on supply chain transformation through the implementation of procurement digital solutions.”

Globally, supply chain disruptions can cause a 62% loss in finances. This partnership between Protiviti and RheinBrucke will ensure agile procurement operations.

Commenting on the new alliance, Arindam De said, “Our strategic partnership with RheinBrucke supports our endeavour to bring innovative solutions to our clients, aligning to their business requirements and keeping pace with the technological disruptions in the region. Together, we share a commitment to helping enterprises streamline and optimize their purchasing processes through strategic sourcing and eProcurement.”

MeRLIN serves as a solution for direct and indirect procurement and is recognised by analysts such as Spend Matters for its depth and solution coverage. MeRLIN was recently named as a Notable Vendor in 2022 Gartner® Manufacturing Context: Magic Quadrant™ for Procure-to-Pay Suites.

*Gartner, “Manufacturing Context: Magic Quadrant for Procure-to-Pay Suites”, William McNeill, Cian Curtin, Kaitlynn Sommers, March 7, 2022.

Disclaimer – GARTNER and MAGIC QUADRANT are registered trademarks and service marks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

MeRLIN Sourcing was named as a Notable Vendor in 2022 Gartner® Manufacturing Context: Magic Quadrant™ for Procure-to-Pay Suites

March, 2022: MeRLIN Sourcing was named as a Notable Vendor in 2022 Gartner® Manufacturing Context: Magic Quadrant™ for Procure-to-Pay Suites for its platform MeRLIN. We consider this as a validation of MeRLIN’s ability to support direct material sourcing and procurement needs for manufacturing organizations. This reinforces our belief in our capability to deliver best-in-class solutions to our customers worldwide and help them transform their procurement processes to boost efficiency and performance. 

MeRLIN offers an end-to-end solution that provides powerful capabilities to address the complex sourcing needs of the manufacturing industry. It enables manufacturers to maximize their profits by involving sourcing early in the product development lifecycle to balance cost reduction, supplier quality, assurance of supply and increasingly unlock supplier innovation. MeRLIN’s innovative features are designed to meet direct sourcing needs of manufacturers such as BOM based sourcing, commodity/category management, engineering change management, supplier collaboration and so on. It also offers supply management, planning, ASNs, Payment gateways integrations and more. The supplier risk functionality is the in the near term roadmap.

The out-of-the-box analytics in MeRLIN helps improve performance of direct sourcing with insights from Purchase Price Variance (PPV) Analytics, Supplier Analytics, Spend & Savings Analytics, Program Lifecycle Analytics with BOM level visibility, BOM Waterfall Analysis etc.

MeRLIN enables manufacturers to optimize the cost, quality, and performance of the supply chain by arriving at supplier agreements that deliver best sourcing results. It helps organizations realize sustainable long-term value besides savings and thus increase their bottom-line

About MeRLIN Sourcing

MeRLIN is a Strategic Sourcing Solution for Direct & Indirect Procurement that offers seamlessly integrated sourcing process automation with supplier relationship management and planning functions augmented by advanced analytics. It plays a key role in enhancing collaboration between buyers and suppliers offering an intuitive and easy to use platform. MeRLIN is modular, flexible, configurable, integrated and easy to deploy. It is developed on Microsoft technology platform and can be hosted either On-premise or on the cloud. It is the go-to solution for strategic sourcing needs of enterprise sourcing organizations. 

Gartner® Disclaimer

*Gartner, “Manufacturing Context: Magic Quadrant for Procure-to-Pay Suites”, William McNeill, Cian Curtin, Kaitlynn Sommers, March 7, 2022.

Disclaimer- GARTNER and MAGIC QUADRANT are registered trademarks and service marks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

MeRLIN, has been chosen by the Department of Finance, Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) to digitalize its public procurement

April, 2021, Dubai, UAE: MeRLIN, has been shortlisted by the Department of Finance, Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) to digitalize its public procurement systems for enhanced efficiency, accountability, and transparency across all operations. The collaboration is well-aligned with the UAE leadership’s ongoing efforts to maximize efficiencies across public and private sector industries through digitalization.

His Excellency Mohammed Hassan Alnoman, Chairman of RheinBrücke Middle East, and His Excellency Yousuf Ali Mohammed, Director General of Department of Finance, Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) signed the project charter agreement for POC in the presence of senior representatives of the two entities.

Digitalization and a shift in consumer preferences during the pandemic has disrupted the industry across the Middle East and this trend appears poised to grow. According to the International Data Corporation, the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) region is expected to spend US$20 billion on digital transformation initiatives this year and up to US$40 billion by 2022.

Under the terms of the POC project charter, Department of Finance, Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) will leverage MeRLIN, a strategic sourcing solution that offers seamlessly integrated sourcing process automation. In addition, MeRLIN is mandated to assist the department with supplier relationship management and planning and offer advanced analytics support in its digital transformation journey. MeRLIN is also set to enable the department to meet its national development objectives of enhancing the efficiency and delivery of public service, developing human capital, and boosting the private sector’s contribution to the national GDP.     

His Excellency Mohammed Hassan Alnoman, said: ‘We are pleased to partner with Department of Finance, Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) in its digital transformation efforts that will significantly optimize process and system efficiencies to ultimately ensure it surpasses customer expectations.

‘RheinBrücke’s MeRLIN is at the forefront in enabling entities to improve business processes and maximise human potential through increasing employee productivity and lowering operational costs. Our team expertise lies in finding innovative products to solve our partners’ most complex business challenges.’

He added: ‘Through implementing MeRLIN, Department of Finance, Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) will see its teams become more flexible and agile and stay two steps ahead in today’s highly competitive business environment. The digital roadmap for end-to-end automation of sourcing and procurement will significantly enhance the department’s ability to reach out to smaller suppliers and prospective customers.

The RheinBrücke team will work with Executives of Department of Finance and will work very closely with Executives of Electronic Government Authority (EGA) taking their guidance to ensure the solution meets the stringent security and integration requirements of EGA ‘

His Excellency Yousuf Ali Mohammed, said: ‘As part of our efforts to enhance our digital infrastructure and capabilities across all operations, this project will enable us to introduce the most advanced practices that comply with the highest standards in the country’s government sector. We are committed to continuously enhancing the financial planning process, budgeting and public procurement to achieve greater financial control, transparency and efficiency. Our vision is to shape a competitive ecosystem that keeps pace with the changes taking place in our industry. We aspire to lead the way in scaling up efficiencies of the financial, accounting and public procurement function in government departments. Through this synergy with RheinBrücke’, we seek to create a world-class digital Public Procurement ecosystem in Ras Al Khaimah.’ 

Department of Finance, Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) and RheinBrücke have commenced POC of the strategic partnership to digitally transform the procurement experience. The MeRLIN solution is in current phase focusing on five processes related to the procurement cycle of the government, including vendor management and registration, tendering, auction management, supplier invoice management and spend management.

MeRLIN is modular, flexible, configurable and easy to deploy platform that is will be globally available on Microsoft Azure. In the UAE, it has partnered with Moro Hub and is poised to become the go-to solution for the strategic sourcing needs of public sector enterprises and other non-public sector enterprise sourcing organizations.

MeRLIN has joined hands with Monaquasah PMC to support in running their entire technology platform.

April, 2021, Dubai, UAE: MeRLIN has joined hands with Monaquasah PMC to support in running their entire technology platform. MeRLIN will be used to run their complete e-tendering platform from supplier management to end customers registering and finding their goods and services of choice. 

Implementation of MeRLIN for Monaquasah gives them end-to-end supply chain visibility and allows them to have a highly effective digitalized platform for vendor management, tendering, auction and supplier invoice management enabling them to save time, reduce errors, increase transparency and improve efficiency. The platform will provide 100% traceability and auditability with respect to compliances. RheinBrücke’s MeRLIN Sourcing and Procurement solution for Monaquasah will provide extended capabilities such as Bid Bond management, Contract Authoring and payment gateway integrations for digital payments.

Monaqasah PMC is a Kuwaiti company established in late 2019 to serve the Kuwaiti market and the international market with a vision of transforming of business environments into an electronic eco system that is easy, flexible, accurate, credible, transparent and secured.

Visteon, a pure-play supplier of automotive cockpit electronics, and a Fortune 500 company has implemented MeRLIN

Visteon, a pure-play supplier of automotive cockpit electronics, the fastest-growing segment in the industry, and a Fortune 500 company has implemented MeRLIN as the foundation for its procurement transformation. 

Given the nature of the highly competitive industry and their huge number of widespread suppliers across countries, Visteon needed a solution to ensure they have the right materials meeting quality requirements at the right time in order to ramp up their manufacturing capacity and meet customer needs as well as satisfy all the required terms to show higher profitability. The modules implemented includes Supplier Management – Supplier Information Management, Sourcing, Catalogue Management and Analytics. The solution also includes an internet based supplier portal.

MeRLIN implementation will help Visteon to create a single source of truth for all master data including parts, suppliers, prices, purchase orders etc. and consolidate data from multiple ERP instances. The solution will enable standardization and unification of business processes, templates and business rules across all regions. The complete automation of sourcing and awarding processes and increased visibility of all parts and prices using the system is expected to significantly increase competitiveness, reduce procurement errors and free up time of procurement team members to focus on more strategic activities.