A key stage in any procurement process, spend analysis begins with thorough data collection. Once you’ve gathered all your spend data, it’s time to group it together in one central location. After that consolidation, you have to cleanse your data. That means correcting any typos or inconsistencies that might interfere with your analysis. Then, group your spend by supplier and category. Now, it’s finally time to analyze your data, measuring against the key performance indicators that matter to your organization.

Corcentric’s Procurement Analytics software streamlines the spend analysis process by automating many of its most time-consuming processes.

Supplier relationships depend on trust and a sense of mutual investment. These relationships can suffer when one party lacks visibility into the other’s operations and performance. Spend data analytics provides insights into how you engage suppliers that can help your organization better determine its priorities and allocate its resources.

Whatever metrics you consider relevant, data accuracy is everything in spend analysis. That’s why all spend analyses include a thorough data cleanse. Ensuring data is accurate typically means poring over line after line, but procurement data analytics technology eliminates much of the need for hands-on effort.

Procurement analytics software helps procurement and finance professionals by automating many of the most time-consuming portions of the spend analysis process and making it simpler to generate insights.

Spend analysis is the foundation of spend management. It’s especially useful for bringing “tail spend” under management. An organization’s tail is the portion of spend that is not managed strategically. In some organizations, all indirect spend qualifies as tail spend. Conducting a thorough and strategic spend analysis is the first step in better understanding and managing tail spend and all areas of your organization’s spend profile.