Being in procurement isn't easy these times. We are sure you agree. Fluctuating and volatile markets with thousands of uncertainties are tough to manage effectively and efficiently. The amount of data and information we need to process is higher than ever and markets are changing quicker than ever in history. But is Procurement Intelligence the answer to our current problems? Let´s find out together.
Let's start with discussing what Procurement Intelligence actually means. Procurement Intelligence refers to the effective usage of data, technology and analytics to improve the procurement performance of an organization. It involves gathering and analyzing all relevant internal and external data points, such as your spend data, market data and supplier insights, in order to make informed and sound decisions about your procurement strategies and purchasing activities.
How can you benefit from Procurement Intelligence? Procurement Intelligence can influence many aspects of your business; and has many attributes to benefit a business.
1. Transparency Due to advanced analytics and smart algorithms, procurement intelligence helps you to analyze your internal data. Adding critical market intelligence data to your respective categories and part numbers will also support you in gaining understanding of how the dynamic markets impact your spends across regions, categories and suppliers. Giving procurement professionals an holistic view of their actual spend, trends risks and potentials.
2. Mitigation Risk mitigation strategies require insights into your internal spend data but also a link to supplier information and market data. Leveraging procurement intelligence systems, you can combine those data sources to identify risks ahead of time. This allows your organization to prepare respective contingency plans and negotiations ahead of time.
3. Savings Cost savings might be the biggest benefit of Procurement Intelligence; specially when markets are not in the favor of the buyer. Intelligent system can mimic the analytical thinking of a buyer to automatically identify new cost-saving potentials based on changing transactional data.
4. Speed Gathering data across multiple systems and data sources takes time. Cleansing, analyzing and visualizing data is taking even more time. Today's technologies allow to fully automated the process of handling, analyzing but more over interpreting data.
"The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage." Arie de Geus
Integration of an intelligent procurement system into your existing IT-landscape Impacting a company's established IT-landscape is difficult and usually takes a lot of resources. But what if you can leave your already intake landscape in place and just add another layer on top of it? Most companies already have a fully functional ERP-backbone in place as well as an operational procurement suite. However, external data and market intelligence is not mapped to their corresponding categories and parts, missing out on critical strategical insights and still dwelling on manual work. To answer the question: Yes, you can add another layer without replacing any existing tools. Giving you advanced analytics capability without major reconstruction of your established IT-landscape.
Beyond data visualization Yes - visualizing data and taking the right conclusions from it is still an important aspect. Nevertheless, with today's technologies, we can take it one step further and go beyond traditional data visualization. AI and smart algorithms are able to mimic the thinking and analytical approach of the strategic buyer, but with unlimited time and real time data. Established procurement tools are now fully automated and do calculate, visualize and notify the individual procurement professional of every new opportunity or risk. That empowers organizations to bring back focus on the execution of the given insights. Thus shifting the workload from manual data processing to the execution of business critical strategies and negotiations.
Procurement Intelligence does add significant value Procurement intelligence has many benefits and enables procurement departments to unlock new potential. It frees up valuable resources and thus leaves time for crucial strategic procurement decisions and negotiations. Enhanced transparency and risk mitigation are also side effects of a solid procurement intelligence tool.
But, Procurement intelligence can only unlock your full potential if you look beyond data visualization and utilize AI and market intelligence to automate and generate valuable insights that enable your procurement department to focus on the essential: Saving Money & strategically positioning your business for the future!
Procurement Intelligence can be integrated into your existing IT-Landscape Modern strategic procurement tools are straightforward to implement into existing IT landscapes without binding tremendous amounts of resources and time. Enabling organizations to update their strategic procurement within a few weeks and benefiting from newly gained insights immediately.
