Customer Case: IBA – Accelerating Vendor Management with the Alluvion Vendor Form 

About IBA

IBA (Ion Beam Applications S.A.) is a global medical technology company headquartered in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Specializing in proton therapy and particle accelerators for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, IBA is a recognized leader in its field. With more than 1,500 employees worldwide and operations in over 40 countries, the company plays a critical role in advancing cutting-edge cancer treatment technologies.

Given the complexity and regulatory nature of the healthcare and medical device sectors, IBA relies heavily on accurate, high-quality master data to maintain compliance, ensure operational efficiency, and support informed decision-making across departments.

Challenge

As a global leader in proton therapy and radiopharmacy solutions, IBA operates across multiple countries and must collaborate with a wide range of vendors. To support its international footprint, IBA needed a scalable, standardized, and reliable process for vendor onboarding and master data maintenance.

However, the existing process was heavily manual, relying on emails and disconnected documents. This approach made it difficult to ensure data consistency, introduced delays in vendor activation, and lacked integration with their SAP system. As a result, teams faced challenges related to duplicate entries, incomplete records, and increased administrative workload — all of which posed risks to data quality and compliance.

Implementing a more structured and automated solution became essential to support IBA’s operational efficiency and governance standards.

Solution

To address these issues, IBA implemented the Alluvion Vendor Form, a user-friendly, web-based solution integrated with SAP Master Data Governance (MDG). This custom form simplifies and automates the collection of vendor master data by enabling external vendors to directly input all required information, including:

• General company data
• Multiple address types (e.g., headquarters, billing, shipping)
• Bank account/IBAN details
• Tax-related information (e.g., VAT number, tax classification)
• Contact person details (multiple records)
• Supporting attachments
• Additional comments and notes

Before entering in the SAP MDG workflow, the form checks that all mandatory fields are filled in, helping to reduce missing data and avoid unnecessary delays during the onboarding process.

The Form is setup on both SAP MDG as well as SAP BTP. In the MDG system a custom OData service is created to communicate with BTP and send the entities like address data, bank data, contact persons, ... On top of this OData service, the BP creation workflow is expanded to use this service and send the data to the BTP application, as well as to read the data it receives from the BTP back into the SAP MDG Change Request.

On the SAP BTP Workzone, the form needs 2 destinations, 1 to communicate with the mailing service of the client, so it can send the mails containing the vendor form link. It also needs a destination to connect to the SAP MDG system using the SAP Cloud Connector. Once the destinations are setup, using the BAS or windows terminal, the application can be deployed to the space on the BTP workzone. The form consists of a main application as well as a ‘service’ application, this service handles communication with the SAP backend system and the communication with the mail server.

Using the Postman tool, the parameters and and field configurations can be setup, some of these settings include the mail layout, mandatory, read only, hidden fields, sending mail address and the form url.

The solution was seamlessly integrated with SAP S/4HANA, ensuring consistency, compliance, and a streamlined vendor experience across procurement processes. It eliminated the need for email-based templates and disconnected data entries, enabling a more structured, auditable, and secure vendor onboarding process.

Benefits

• Time Efficiency: Automating workflows and validating mandatory fields from the start typically leads to a faster and more streamlined vendor onboarding process.
• Improved Data Quality: Standardized input structures help minimize manual entry errors and reduce the likelihood of duplicate records.
• Simplified Enrichment Process: The enrichment process flow for vendor creation in SAP MDG is streamlined, ensuring responsible teams such as Procurement, Accounting, and Tax work with validated, accurate data from the beginning.
• Stronger Compliance: Transparent processes and audit traceability support compliance with both internal governance and external regulatory requirements.
• Better User Experience: An intuitive, user-friendly interface is expected to reduce manual follow-ups and improve the overall satisfaction of procurement and business users.

Conclusion

The implementation of the Alluvion Vendor Form has enabled IBA to modernize and streamline its vendor onboarding process. By aligning with SAP best practices, IBA has established a scalable, efficient, and future-ready solution that supports ongoing business growth and operational excellence.