Hello Everybody. I was missing the action on this blog since around 4 months now. Actually I was too busy with new data management engagement in my new role. As its a vacation season, its time to gather thoughts and share it..... Hope I will continue...
As the title of this blog says "its a time to look at your data, spend data". YES, as everybody is hard pressed for cash in the difficult time like this - where to look for it? I have one answer - Look at your own transactions to see if you can save some there. Lets check what are you spending on, categorise your spend well.Check if you know where you can negotiate with your vendors and go for it. You will amaze to see how you have ignored this point in the past and how much you can save by doing this. My experience tells me that you can get benefit of atleast 5 to 7 % of savings by doing this activity.
Wondering how - Keep reading ....
Lets make it simple. You have repository of suppliers, and lots of transactions for those suppliers in your system. Right? Now what you need to do is - extract all that information, cleanup your suppliers data for names, address, parent linkages and other things. So you get actual number of vendors you are negotiating with - a non duplicated and neat database. Now look at your transactions. Using your own MRP data, chart of accounts and other available text information, you need to categorize all these transactions. E.g if you have spent 5$ on say ball point pen you should get it under hierarchy like - writing instruments -pen pencils - pen - ball point pen. You can use widely used schema like UNSPSC, or if you have one or one available in the market by leading data management companies.
Now you need a really good dashboard solution, where you upload this cleansed, normalized and classified data. This way you can slice, dice, put graphs and check what is you are spending on, to whom you are paying, how much and where you can negotiate well to save more .......
So you have data - but till the time you do something to convert it to INFORMATION its of no use. This is the process to convert that to useful information, give you a way to see - slice dice visualize your data to help you better understand it so you can take right decision at right time.
Who provides these solution? - I work for Supply chain management company called bristlecone Inc (http://www.bcone.com) and we provide this service partnering with SAP. I am naturally biased - but even if I am not - I will say its a good industry solution and service to go for comparing with other players in the market.
How much it may cost you? depends on what and how much data you might have. But certainly you will get more than 5% of saving on your spend after doing this at the cost of less that 1% - So 4% is all yours.
Whom should you contact - write me - pmendki@gmail.com or just reply to this post and I will get back to you.
