Merging Internal and External Spend Data for Maximum Cost Savings with Category Management

SpendHQ announced the launch of its new, one-of-a-kind Category Management module, making Spend Intelligence the only spend analysis tool that combines external supply market and supplier data with internal procurement insight on a category specific basis. Layered into Spend Intelligence, Category Management lets procurement teams drill deeper into their detailed usage data and surfaces category-specific insights across more than 40 subcategories. Specifically, the solution enables:

Line-item analytics

• Track sourcing savings
• Mitigate savings leakage
• Uncover incremental savings

Category-specific data

• Granular detail category spend data for targeted categories
• Typically obtained directly from preferred suppliers
• Data refreshed monthly

Today’s global situation has highlighted the need for dedicated category coverage in a visceral way. From complex categories of spend that go into cost-of-goods sold such as metals, plastic, electronics (e.g., chips) and transportation to indirect and services categories such as MRO, IT, office supplies and labor, the combination of atypical levels of price volatility and supply shortages have made category-level insight even more strategic.

Simply put: Procurement needs a next level of market insight not only to manage and mitigate price risk effectively, but also to report to their organization how they are performing, what challenges that might lie ahead, and how customers, margin, and pricing may be impacted.

SpendHQ CEO Scott Macfee says, “The Spend Intelligence Category Management solution came about from a desire to infuse more of our in-house procurement expertise and data from supplier relationships into  our platform to deliver more enhanced insights on a category level. Everything we hear from the market is showing how valuable this strategic understanding is. Our team is excited to launch this new addition to our solution as we continue to redefine the space of spend analytics.”

What Sets Category Management Apart?

With Category Management, Spend Intelligence is now the only spend analytics tool that melds external supply market and supplier data with internal procurement insight on a category-specific basis. This makes resulting outputs more holistic, accurate, and therefore valuable to drive control, context and impact for the business as a whole.

Control – All spend, all sources (internal and external)

• Trust that your data is accurate
• No more manual data manipulation
• Pulls, cleanses, and aggregates data from multiple sources
• Finds and identifies maverick spend that isn’t possible manually

Context – Precise insights for everybody

• Quick answers to questions without a long manual search
• Found category-level savings (that you don’t have to look for)
• External inputs – move with the markets
• Cross-functional understanding, from the category manager to the C-suite

Impact – Savings only your data can imagine

• The power of knowing what to do (with the data to back it up)
• Undisputable year-over-year savings across dozens of categories
• Proof of procurement’s ROI to the business

How Spend Intelligence is Leading the Market in Category Management

Spend Matters recently released a detailed technology review of Spend Intelligence, including the new Category Management solution, saying: “SpendHQ excels, relative to peers, at surfacing actionable spend data, category data, and sub-category data to drive savings strategies. In one word, after looking at Category Management, multiple Spend Matters analysts simply said ‘Wow.’

The particular ability to drill into subcategories that comprise the often overlooked ‘tail spend’ is far superior to an average spend analytics product. When you combine its detailed spend overview for high-spend categories and these purpose-built dashboards for mid-and-tail spend categories, it almost provides an organization with a purpose-built ‘total cost management’ and spend analytics solution in one.”

SpendHQ is thrilled to forge the path for procurement teams into a future where robust data backs the brilliant minds in a burgeoning function.