Supply Chain and Spend Analysis

Hello There,

This time, I thought I should give bit of my thought about how we can use excel in spend analysis.

It might have already discussed in business meetings that sourcing Strategy, Category expertise, negotiation methodology, managing supplier relation and procurement execution are all critical components of a highly effective Supply Chain Management initiative and the beginning of these all process starts with spend analysis, so it is the prime tool.

Spend Analysis should be a hot subject of discussion in any Supply Chain Organization because of the importance it has in a decision making process. Take an example of the hospitality industry; spend analysis plays a prominent role in the procurement function because of the ability a spend analysis report has in helping to understand and to clearly establish expenditure patterns throughout the organization which will eventually enable the Supply Chain practitioners to accurately identify how much ($) is being spent, on what (Goods and Services), with whom (Suppliers), by whom (Business Unit) and how (Method of purchase) on a daily basis.

Also analyzing spends supports the day to day food and beverage costing, or for a monthly menu engineering and event costing, just few of the benefits…

Defining and understanding scope of spend analysis is really become a mighty task these days because of non- availability of cleansed, standardized data.

Besides the above mentioned issue related to quality data there are few more show stoppers the analysts are identified and they are:

1.    Lack of expertise and ability among existing staff to access, organize and analyze spend data for sustainable use.

2.    Lack of consistent approach and source to get the real time spend information from a procurement system.

3.    Failure of Top Management in linking the information and insight gained from spend analysis with the strategy and objectives of their organization

Faced with above said facts, the learning from industries around the globe concludes that, the most successful spend data analysis can be done in a more effective way considering the following:

• Look in to in-depth version of spend data capabilities not just the spend surface.
• Access all spends data within all business units and outside e-procurement group.
• Adopt a common scientific classification Scheme of the spend category.
• An efficient repeatable data cleansing and classification initiative has to do.
• Augment category expertise to data and classification accuracy and validation.
• Classify spending at a detailed level, possibly on subcategories and to products
• Enhance core spend data with vital business projects.
• Increase frequency and coverage of spending analysis.
• Install and utilize advanced reporting and decision support tools not just spread sheet matrix techniques.
• Continuously expand use and scope of spend data management program.

Despite the critical role spend data plays in supply chain management globally, except for some hospitality giants, most organization doesn’t have no formal procedures for managing and analyzing spend data, worse yet the doubt is few of the business units only examining spend data, sometimes the spend data in a hotels managed by single person is been neglected or totally ignored.

Here comes the excel for the rescue; I have attached few screen shots of various excel tools which I prepared to get spend analysis done. Please drop me a line so that I would be glad to share these tools.