Skip to main content

What is a Go Live Point for a Spend Analysis Project?

Now I know thats a stupid question for any project manager. As you have a activity list, tasks, milestones, resources in your Microsoft Project, and once that complets in time, with all required resources, in budget - thats a successful project and there is a last step in your plan - GO LIVE. As a PMI certified Project Management Professional myself I agree with you all.

Thats what happened in one of my recent engagement when team reached to that GO LIVE step. Everybody from bottom to top said - Yes we went live - Bravo - congratulations to the team and kudos and lots of good emails. You certainly love when it happens - but should you when its a Spend Analysis project? a BIG NO NO in my opinion. Why ? Because Spend analysis engagement is  not a conventional project. A part of it when you successfully implement and analytical - business intelligence product - is a milestone. Is that a go live point? again answer is NO.

If we  really look at the objective if implemeting any such tool is to get the consolidated visibility across different source systems within the organization, give more teeth and accuracy to your procurement related analysis, make your sourcing decisions focused and streamlined, identify savings and achieve that in a defined timeframe. Now implementing the analytical portal is a very basis baby step in all this cycle.

So what's next logical milestone but quick one to celebrate? Analyzing and identifying low hanging fruits. How one can do that? lets look at the next post - I promise one by thursday this week.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Master Data Management – Product or Process ?

I have 2 SAP systems and I want to fix my material master, Services Master. I want all that data to be clean, standardized, classified, enriched and load it back to my SAP in next 6 months. What do you suggest ? Chris - one of my key client was explaining during a “solution understanding” call. My sales manager Tom, enthusiastically started talking about new version of the MDM platform by ERP company, tools, technologies, product landscape, licenses etc. After 30 minutes of sales pitch, I could see confusion on Chris’s face clearly. He said - but I don’t want to add any new product in my infrastructure for all this. Can you just implement MDM for me without I adding any new software ?   Both are using MDM implementation as a keyword, but in a completely different context. Chris wants to implement MDM as a process while Tom was trying to sell MDM as a new software. Whats the difference ? Lot I will say. MDM as a product – when you sell a   software license to a customer
4 comments
Read more

Journey of procurement transformation begins with..….. Part II

 Original Blog post - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/journey-procurement-transformation-begins-part-ii-prashant-mendki Procurement transformation journey is complex, cross functional, time consuming and even frustrating at times. The very basic but a strategic step to start this journey is “Spend Analysis”. Again – this has to be done in a right way to get the potential benefits. We talked about that in first part of this article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/journey-procurement-transformation-begins-part-i-prashant-mendki By definition – Spend Analysis is an analysis of your spend (invoice paid), what items you are spending on (product), who you are paying to (supplier). It looks really simple – no? When I worked with one of the large Media Entertainment company few years back, they had thousands of suppliers, millions of transactions, good amount of Maverick spend. It’s a global business with more than $2Bn in Spend, 12 different global systems. Thousands of transacti
Post a Comment
Read more

Everything you want to Know about Supplier Diversity

Last month I have written an article on supplier diversity titled Supplier Diversity have you checked your Supplier base? it gathered lot of interest among industry players in the topic. So I thought of having a one comprehensive article to cover all aspects of Supplier Diversity, what is it, its importance in supply chain etc is. So here are my 2 cents – So what’s the definition of Supplier Diversity worldwide? In the United States of America diversity suppliers are defined as businesses that are at least 51 percent owned, operated and controlled by one or more persons who are: • A racial or ethnic minority, including African American, Asian Indian American, Asian Pacific American, Hispanic American and Native American • Female • Gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgender • U.S. veteran or U.S. service disabled veteran Additionally, businesses certified as Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB) or Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUB Zone) by the U.S. Small Business Administration
2 comments
Read more