5 Tips for Selecting a Spend Visibility and Analytics Platform

5 Tips for Selecting the Correct Spend Analysis Solution Provider

Five recommendations

It’s easier than you’d expect!

1. Understand your organization first Understanding your organization and how it works is one of the most important spend analysis tips anyone can offer you. This includes understanding the processes involved in managing data, how data is used and by whom within the organization. You will need to conduct a gap analysis to determine what is the obstacle to effective decision making (people, processes and/or poor data) including if data is missing, what information is needed by operational teams and how spend analysis could bridge these gaps.

2. Define spend analysis

Spend analysis comes in many shapes and sizes so do not be surprised if colleagues resist your efforts for “yet another spend analysis tool.” Obviously you’ll need to walk carefully if you are to win over executive support for a solution that will transform your business. Spend analysis is not Excel or an ERP/BI platform, both of which are unable to enrich spend data with additional information to give users a holistic picture of enterprise-wide spend intelligence. Spend analysis gives your colleagues a collaborative reporting platform to look at trends, incorporate external benchmarks and perform "what if" analysis to make decisions.

3. Support your business goals

Your business goals including how quickly you want to achieve them will be greatly influenced by the type of spend analysis solution you are evaluating. For example, if your organization wants to reduce indirect

3. Support your business goals Your business goals including how quickly you want to achieve them will be greatly influenced by the type of spend analysis solution you are evaluating. For example, if your organization wants to reduce indirect spend by 25%, and you are four months into the year, purchasing a spend analysis that will take four to six months to be up and running will not help you or your organization. In this specific case, you may want to consider looking at a software as a service spend analysis solution.

4. Do you have buy-in from colleagues?

The greater the number of employees that have access to analytical reports the faster you will achieve your business goals because of the smarter decisions that will be made in light of the intelligence provided by spend analysis. Buy-in should come from senior executives within procurement and finance. Involve these sponsors early on in the selection process by providing them with the information they need to form their own opinions. Find out how they feel about spend analysis and their expectations. Starting off with a clear idea of how they expect a new spend analysis solution to benefit your organization will give you the ammo to choose the right vendor.

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5. Spend wisely With the advent of software as a service, spend analysis need not – and should not – be an expensive purchase for your organization. Vendors you are considering should offer a transparent pricing structure, which entitles everyone within your organization to have access to the broadest suite of reporting and analytical capabilities. Spend analysis solutions that can demonstrate, with customer references, quick returns on investment should move to the top of your short-list. It’ll make your business case a lot easier!

Rosslyn Analytics, the pioneer and leader in software as a service (SaaS) cloud computing spend analysis, is changing the way world-class organizations see their spend, forever. Its award-winning web-based automated spend analytics platform, RA.Pid®, delivered as a service, aligns and empowers ALL employees that can influence spend by delivering visibility of enterprise-wide spend in 20-30 business days. Organizations can start with a free self-service version of RA.Pid that gives users the ability to run base spending reports and identify duplicate payments, for example, within minutes of loading data into the platform. www.rosslynanalytics.com.

5 Tips for Selecting the Correct Spend Analysis Solution

Five recommendations

It’s easier than you’d expect!

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