Insight is Only as Good as the Action You Take from It

Back in the last half term, my two nephews came to stay, so I had 3 boys to entertain for a whole week! Being mindful I didn’t want them to zone out in front of a TV playing Xbox all day, I set to work on planning some fun things to do. One of these things was bowling!

I hadn’t been bowling in years (because I am rubbish at it), so it came as quite a shock to me when I got to the online checkout and saw the overall total for 5 players for two games. But then I saw an offer pop up across the top of the website whereby you could save 50% over half term if booked before a certain date, and was delighted to see the cost halved when I entered the promo code! With this trip costing half of what it could have, it enabled me to book another trip out to the Cinema to watch Peter Rabbit 2 (very good watch if you’re interested!). The kids were happy, and so was my pocket. My pride, however, wasn’t, having come last in both games against an 8, 9, and 13-year-old. I think I need to re-think my nickname, Lucky! 

The thing is, we want to be told where we can save money, but it’s never that easy in the professional world to unlock. Imagine you’re a multi-site organisation spread across the UK, each has the ability to purchase items, each uses a number of suppliers for certain categories like office supplies, and ICT, and there is no centralised reporting. How then do you know whether each site is a) using the preferred supplier which may have negotiated special pricing for you b) whether there are any price differentials on identical items, c) compare how much each is spending on the same category. The simple answer is: You don’t, or you spend weeks and weeks trying.

Let us put this into figures. Imagine the organisation above has 50 sites, and each are purchasing 10 keyboards a month. 30 are buying keyboards at ￡39.99 and the other 20 are buying them at ￡15.99. The 30 sites buying the more expensive option are costing this business an additional ￡7,200 per month, which is ￡86,400 per year. And that is just for one item in one category… What else could be going on?

Advanced Spend Analytics from Compleat Software has been designed to provide this  insight to give our customers 100% visibility across direct and indirect spend, across multiple sites, and other key metrics where necessary, such as staff per site. We can show how many suppliers are being used against each category, how many orders have been placed weekly or monthly, highlighting those being used who are non-preferred. Add to this the ability to view this against the nominal structure, it creates a far more accurate view into overall spend, and where items may not have been correctly coded. We can also show how buying trends can lead to a reduction in carbon emissions, by analysing number of deliveries per supplier per week / month, to highlight consolidation opportunities to reduce carbon footprint. This is just what comes as standard, it gets even more interesting when we look at line level detail, and can show you price variances on individual items, like keyboards. We even go a stage further and highlight possible % in savings against each category. Imagine what you could unlock with this level of insight into spend, across all suppliers, categories, and locations.

However, I believe insight is only as good as the action you choose to take from it, a bit like

"If someone told you that you had a bit of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe, you wouldn’t just carry on walking, would you?"

The reality is though that many organisations simply don’t have the bandwidth to do a full belt and braces spend review, and collate the massive amount of data in a timely and orderly way, to take it out to tender. Our procurement specialists and partners will work with your procurement team to provide this, focussing on key specific categories, to ensure you achieve the best price savings, and further drive governance by putting preferred suppliers back into Compleat to ensure specialist pricing is leveraged company wide. 

So, why not come and talk to us, we’re a lovely bunch! What we are doing in this space is incredibly exciting, and is creating great opportunities for our customers to take that all important action from the insight we can provide.