When the COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses into isolation, collaboration became an act of ingenuity. For Orhan Ozalp, Executive Director of Global SAP Solutions at Interpublic Group (IPG), that challenge became a catalyst for transformation.
IPG, a global marketing services company with hundreds of agencies across dozens of countries, had long operated in a decentralized structure, a model that allowed its brands creative freedom, but one that also created serious inefficiencies in procurement. Vendor onboarding, compliance validation, and invoice processing were fragmented across local systems and spreadsheets.
Before 2020, vendor information was collected through forms and emails, validated manually, and entered into disparate systems, with little to no global visibility. Data was scattered across multiple databases: one for risk, another for diversity classification, another for certificates. There was no single source of truth.
“We had at least three different data sources, and no layer to manage the master data,” says Ozalp. “The data was very much fragmented.”
That fragmentation had operational consequences. IPG was onboarding an astonishing 600 new vendors each week, many of them duplicates or one-off engagements. With agencies often responding to client-driven vendor requests, sometimes onboarding influencers, freelancers, or niche specialists, the company’s vendor population ballooned to more than 50,000 suppliers worldwide.
But in 2020, amid the turbulence of the pandemic, IPG decided it was time to bring order to the chaos.
Building a Business Case in a Time of Uncertainty
Convincing leadership to embark on a global procurement transformation in the middle of COVID was no small feat.
“Due to COVID, we were meeting virtually with people, so the project was also created virtually,” Ozalp recalls. “The most important thing is face-to-face interaction and team building, and we did all of that virtually.”
Paradoxically, the crisis that separated teams also sharpened their focus. “Because it was during COVID, people were really super focused on this project,” he says. “Bad side is, I never met with the people that I was working with. But the good news is that everybody was committed to the business goals. We really formed a good working team.”
That focus, combined with years of familiarity among colleagues in IPG’s SAP Center of Excellence, allowed the project to move forward despite the constraints. The group already had experience managing SAP landscapes across IPG’s many agencies, and that expertise proved invaluable in designing a unified procurement framework.
The Road to SAP Ariba
In 2020, IPG chose SAP Ariba as the backbone of its procurement modernization effort.
For an organization with more than 100 ERP systems, implementing Ariba meant not just adopting new technology, but defining a standard global business process. “We’re a holding company and a decentralized organization,” Ozalp explains. “We understand the value of back-office functions, and we had already begun moving those into shared services. But vendor management was still largely manual.”
Before Ariba, onboarding a vendor meant filling out forms, waiting for approvals through email or SharePoint, and relying on different teams to validate risk, compliance, and data integrity. Diversity certifications were stored separately, and reporting required manual reconciliation across systems.
With SAP Ariba, that changed. Vendor onboarding, risk management, and invoice processing became unified under one standardized workflow. The benefits were immediate and measurable:
- Vendor population reduced by 45%, from 50,000 to about 28,000 active suppliers.
- Requisition approvals that once took over two weeks now take just 1.75 days.
- Invoice automation has slashed manual processing times and improved compliance.
- Vendor onboarding is now fully tracked and transparent, with shared service SLAs and regional accountability.
“We now have one way of onboarding vendors across the world,” says Ozalp. “There are some local differences like diversity certifications in Europe, but we’ve established a consistent global process.”
Branding a Transformation: “Supplier Wise”
To roll out a global transformation at IPG’s scale, technology alone wasn’t enough. Change management had to be deliberate, structured, and visible.
To that end, IPG created a Business Transformation Office, launching a communications and engagement initiative branded as Supplier Wise, a name that encapsulated the goal of “interacting with vendors wisely.”
“We created the branding, a web page, and a clear set of objectives,” Ozalp explains. “We didn’t share the business case details there, but we made the goals visible. We socialized what we wanted to achieve.”
Crucially, IPG engaged leaders from its shared services organizations, designating them as regional ambassadors to drive adoption locally. Support from the global CFO and controller gave the initiative the executive weight it needed to succeed.
“It was a lot of work,” Ozalp says, “but marketing, communication, and change management all worked together.”
A Cross-Functional Effort
IPG’s transformation was no isolated IT project. It required collaboration across multiple disciplines including:
- Business Transformation Group – driving process design and continuous improvement.
- Strategic Sourcing and Procurement – ensuring category and vendor strategy alignment.
- SAP Center of Excellence – managing architecture, integration, and technical design.
- Shared Services – serving as data stewards and vendor-facing communicators.
- Supplier Enablement Team – working with SAP’s Business Network group to onboard vendors efficiently.
Together, these groups transformed procurement from a patchwork of local processes into a globally integrated platform.
Data Discipline and Vendor Rationalization
One of the most significant outcomes of IPG’s Ariba implementation has been vendor rationalization.
“When we started, we had around 50,000 vendors,” Ozalp says. “We’ve since reduced that to around 28,000, about a 50% reduction.”
The reduction was achieved through a mix of data cleansing, duplication removal, and preferred vendor usage. Each year, IPG runs a vendor purge process, identifying unused or inactive records and removing them from the system.
“This was more around duplication of vendor records,” he notes. “We encourage people to use preferred vendors rather than creating new ones, which helps harmonize the data and improve negotiation power.”
Preferred vendor classification also supports better compliance and cost management, giving IPG greater visibility into spend across brands and regions.
Automating the Invoice Journey
Vendor onboarding was just one half of the equation. IPG also tackled the inefficiencies in invoice processing, a critical bottleneck for many global companies.
Once vendors were onboarded through Ariba and connected to the SAP Business Network, IPG began standardizing purchase order and invoicing workflows, integrating catalog and non-catalog buying, and aligning approvals across shared services.
To bridge the gap between traditional email-based invoicing and automated systems, IPG built complementary solutions on top of Ariba, including OCR and AI-based invoice verification.
“If people weren’t checking their invoices in Ariba, we could still process them automatically,” says Ozalp. “We take invoices from email, use OCR and AI to verify them, and start the workflow.”
This combination of automation and orchestration, powered by SAP Ariba, SAP ERP, and master data governance (MDG), has delivered end-to-end visibility from vendor onboarding to payment.
The Power of a Strong SAP Center of Excellence
Behind the technical success lies IPG’s SAP Center of Excellence (CoE), which Ozalp describes as a cornerstone of the transformation.
“Our company’s strength is that we have a very strong SAP Center of Excellence,” he says. “It helps you put the right architecture in place.”
The CoE also plays a key role in managing SAP MDG (Master Data Governance), which Ozalp sees as a crucial, if sometimes misunderstood, component.
“Many people don’t understand the function of MDG and find it hard to implement,” he notes. “But it’s a one-time effort. If you put the right architecture in place, it works like a dream. MDG becomes the single source of truth.”
Through MDG, IPG manages data orchestration across Ariba, SAP ERP, and Supplier Lifecycle and Performance (SLP). Vendor purge processes, data updates, and even vendor blocking actions are all automated across systems.
“When we do a purge process in MDG, it updates SLP, blocks those vendors, and synchronizes with ERP,” Ozalp explains. “Everything stays consistent.”
Next Steps: AI and Procurement Intelligence
Even as IPG continues to refine its procurement landscape, Ozalp is already looking ahead, particularly at the potential of AI and business data clouds to drive further optimization.
One persistent challenge lies in vendor discovery and searchability. “Buying from a vendor still requires using multiple tools,” he says. “You can search in Ariba, but it doesn’t tell you how to buy from that vendor.”
To solve that, IPG is developing a Procurement Assistant; an AI-powered tool designed to enhance search and categorization, helping users find the right vendor and understand how to engage with them.
“We have suppliers, libraries, and data sources,” Ozalp says. “But people can’t always find what they need. So we’re working on an AI project to enhance search and provide guidance — that’s our next frontier.”
Integrating with the SAP Business Network
Today, IPG manages $980 million in spend, engaging with 8,000 suppliers through the SAP Business Network, and processing over bb annually.
The company’s engagement with the network is strategic and data driven. “We run spend analysis with the Business Network,” says Ozalp. “Then we engage with SAP’s supplier enablement team to identify vendors we need to onboard.”
Initially, the goal was to onboard every vendor onto the network. But over time, the strategy matured. “We were very idealistic at first,” he admits. “We wanted to onboard everyone. Then we decided to do it on a need basis.”
The systematic onboarding approach ensures that the most relevant and frequently used vendors are prioritized, delivering higher value without overwhelming internal teams or external partners.
Guided Buying, Risk, and Future Expansion
With SAP Ariba now fully integrated into IPG’s operations, the company continues to expand its ecosystem in the following ways:
- Guided Buying: Piloted in the U.S. and Canada, with plans to scale after ongoing M&A activities settle.
- SAP Risk: Completed a global rollout as part of the company’s Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) strategy.
- SAP Sourcing and SAP Contracts: Identified as upcoming milestones to further enhance visibility and control.
Working closely with SAP’s Solution Value Advisory team, IPG has also joined the SAP Reference Program, sharing its success story with other enterprise customers navigating similar challenges.
Heading Toward a Business Data Cloud Future
Looking forward, Ozalp sees immense potential in SAP’s Business Data Cloud and its partnership with Databricks, particularly for accelerating insights and reducing time-to-market for analytics.
“Some people really need raw data to create their own queries,” he says. “But I’d like to see data products that are integrated with other SAP tools and can be easily consumed. That’s the urgency — reducing time to business insight.”
He envisions a future where standardized data products and automated KPI dashboards eliminate the need for manual reporting. “The good news is that SAP has come to a good place with all their acquisitions,” he adds, “and that’s helping move us closer to that vision.”
A Transformation That Defines What’s Next
From a tangle of disconnected systems to a unified procurement ecosystem, IPG’s transformation underscores how technology and teamwork can thrive even under the most challenging conditions.
“In the end, it’s about creating one source of truth and one way of doing business,” says Ozalp. “It’s not just about efficiency; it’s about agility and insight.”
And for a company that takes its marketing seriously, Supplier Wise has become more than a brand name. It’s a philosophy that reflects the wisdom gained from navigating a transformation through one of the most turbulent times in modern business history.