As German technology group Körber marks its 80th anniversary, its procurement operation looks nothing like it did a decade ago.
In 2017, the company ran nearly 20 separate enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems with little central coordination. Today it runs eight — all feeding a single supplier relationship management (SRM) platform — and chief procurement officer Michael Schürmann is now layering AI on top, with 12 use cases already in production.
It’s a setup the company’s founder could scarcely have imagined from a postwar German workshop. The company’s roots date back to 1946 in Hamburg, Germany, when founder Kurt Körber developed inventions ranging from the lottery drum to the radio tuning scale, helping users find the correct frequency. He also patented an automated process for inserting filters into cigarettes during production.
“Today, we are still the global market leader in cigarette machinery, although that market now represents only about 25% of our overall operations,” Schürmann tells TechInformed.
Alongside this legacy business, Körber is now a nearly €3 billion company spanning pharma, supply chain and technology divisions, and aims to grow to €10 billion by 2035.
As a global company, Körber has expanded through the acquisition of midsize businesses. Today, it employs around 1,000 people across procurement and supply chain management, including roughly 350 to 400 in procurement alone, working with 13,000 suppliers. Supporting this growth requires a strong focus on innovation.
How procurement software supports company strategy
The company’s systems reflected that scale. “Back in 2017, Körber had nearly 20 ERP systems,” explains Schürmann. “Procurement was largely decentralized across these systems, with limited central coordination. Today we’ve reduced that to eight, and long term we aim for three or four.”
The company recognized the need for a more unified approach and decided to build a core system to integrate procurement processes across the organization.
“Ivalua was selected in 2018 as our SRM platform after a very thorough evaluation involving around 20 people and detailed use-case analysis,” says Schürmann.
Since then, the firm has implemented the platform step by step. It is now fully deployed and widely used across the organization.
Why simple AI use cases build employee trust
For Körber, the next phase is exploring AI capabilities within the platform. The company currently has 12 AI use cases in production, around eight from Ivalua and four developed internally, with more in progress.
“One simple but impactful example is the handling of nondisclosure agreements (NDAs),” says Schürmann. “We generate a large volume of these documents with suppliers. Previously uploading and managing them was a manual and time-consuming process.”
Now, users can simply drag and drop a document into the system, he says, and AI extracts the relevant data and populates the required fields automatically, leaving the user to review and confirm.
“It’s very well received by employees,” Schürmann says. “Use cases like this are important not just for efficiency, but also for change management. They demonstrate tangible benefits and help build trust in AI, reducing resistance and encouraging adoption.”
He hopes the company will become increasingly AI-capable, empowering employees to embed these tools into their everyday workflows.
How technology speeds acquisition integration
A key part of the company’s growth strategy is acquisitions.
“To make that work, we need a strong IT infrastructure that allows new businesses to be integrated quickly,” Schürmann says.
The goal is effectively a plug-and-play model for integrating new acquisitions.
“From a procurement perspective, the focus is always on value creation. However, much of the work in any organization is taken up by administrative or compliance tasks.”
Technology, and increasingly AI, helps reduce that burden, he says, allowing more time to be spent on higher-value activities.
Beyond efficiency, AI is also expected to support Körber’s broader strategic goals.
One application is data quality and transparency: machine learning is used to cluster and harmonize supplier data across multiple systems, creating a unified view of the supplier base.
Using AI to make environmental costs visible
In sustainability, the focus is on transparency. Tools such as IntegrityNext are used to collect supplier data, while AI helps process and analyze it more efficiently.
“The problem today is that environmental costs are not visible,” Schürmann says. “Technology can help create that transparency.”
This aligns with Körber’s broader values, rooted in its founder’s emphasis on responsibility.
“We will not compromise on sustainability,” he added, echoing a recent statement from the company’s leadership.
‘Get started’
For organizations still at an earlier stage, Schürmann’s advice is simply to “get started.”
A pragmatic approach involves beginning with simple use cases, involving employees, building internal capability and scaling over time.
For Körber, that journey is underway, reshaping procurement into a function that not only supports the business but also helps drive its next phase of growth.