Case Study: Acea Group achieves proactive, centralized procurement planning and HQ-to-subsidiary alignment with Board

Achieving perfect synergy between HQ and subsidiaries

Acea is an integrated Italian multiutility active in water, energy and waste services (€3.379bn revenue, 7,650 employees) that centralised purchasing at group HQ to manage ~1,600 suppliers, 3,200 orders and ~€1.1bn in contracts. Despite a fully digital request flow, buyers were engaged late and worked reactively, with limited group‑level visibility, seasonal peaks causing processing delays, and little ability to plan long‑term or exploit market opportunities.

Acea selected the Board platform for its usability and extensibility and implemented a unified procurement planning, analytics and KPI solution built around a nine‑step workflow and a single dataset. The system gave HQ and 20+ subsidiaries shared visibility, automated scheduling and role‑based workflows, enabling proactive annual planning, smoother workload distribution, stronger collaboration and better tender positioning. The rollout delivered faster, more transparent procurement governance, measurable performance tracking and a foundation for expanded BI, simulation and forecasting.

Acea Group

Clorinda Pavoncello

Head of Planning & Control - Purchasing and Logistics