Spend Analytic Reports, Software and Spreadsheets
- Robert Menard, Certified Purchasing Professional, Certified Professional Purchasing Consultant
Clients frequently ask for “spend analytics”. In most cases, their enterprise wide software is fundamentally accounting based and therefore does little more than address basic purchasing needs such as:
- Create RFx
- Issue Pos
- Item (Part) number systems to build data bases
- Sort data in various ways
Some packages may have bid analysis and some evaluation capability, but in general these accounting based software systems are very weak (except for the giant software packages or the high profile purchasing specific programs) in reporting and analytics.
The reports available out of the box are not very robust and custom written reports are very expensive. For the overwhelming preponderance of us, the spend analytics problem is usually resolved by resort to Excel spread sheets that we devise ourselves.
To manage and analyze spend, we must have access to historical data sorted by account, supplier, item (part) number and multiple other fields, the complexity of which depends upon specific needs.
Capability proceeds from creativity
With a little ingenuity, we can design spread sheet solutions to spend analytics needs and make our decisions on the solid ground of dollars and numbers. Excel can be used to analyze bids, sort and data, convert to charts and graphs, and project trend lines for demand forecasting and replenishment, and many other purposes, even financial analysis of suppliers. At the high end, complex spider graphs for supplier evaluation can be rendered.
At the request of many American Purchasing Society (APS) members and many of you who have contacted me about this very issue, I will soon be creating an online course in collaboration with the APS to fill this gap and provide buying pros with another valuable tool. There will even be mini-tutorials so even those “Excel averse” among us can come to use and profit by creativity in our profession.
What the course will do
The online course will include sample data bases that engage participants in real time exercises, toggling between the online course and Excel spread sheets on their desktops. This exercise driven course will demonstrate how to input and maneuver the data in a variety of ways to analyze and make informed decisions.
Participants will be able to save and modify the templates they create in this online course for immediate application at work.
What you can do
This course is under development. The best education and training addresses market place demands so we want to hear from you on what you would like to see, know, or learn more about. Please send me an email with your thoughts at RobertMenard@RobertMenard.com