Daily Archives: December 7, 2011

New White-Paper! Spend Visibility: An Implementation Guide

Sourcing Innovation is excited to announce the release of Spend Visibility: An Implementation Guide. Clocking in at over 130 pages, this is the first white-paper that not only defines what spend analysis and spend visibility really is, but that also offers a step-by-step, vendor-free, implementation guide that demonstrates how an organization can achieve substantial year-over-year savings. Truth be told, it’s chock-full of information that many spend analysis service providers don’t want you to know. In the past, many organizations would pay tens of thousands of dollars for the information contained within its pages, which would be gathered incrementally during projects with third party experts, but it is now free for the taking as Sourcing Innovation wants everyone to understand what Spend Analysis and Spend Visibility is, and is not. As per the introduction, it’s important to understand that:

      Almost any attempt by an organization to analyze spending patterns is likely to be fruitful, especially if there hasn’t been a serious prior attempt. It is easy to find thousands of breathless testimonials about a particular product or method — independent of the quality of the product or method — because almost any product or method will find savings if a spend visibility initiative has never been launched before. “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

However,

      This simple fact has confused end-user organizations and analysts for many years. In fact, it has convinced most spend visibility vendors (and most analysts) that spend visibility is a fundamentally simple process of mapping Accounts Payable spend, and then drilling for dollars. This is why many spend analysis products have remained largely unchanged for years; there is no perceived need to do anything “more”.

And this is a BIG problem. The savings come from doing more. Much more. As the introduction continues:

      What is not so obvious is that this initial burst of savings is short-lived; and that many of the “quick saves” that result are unsustainable. The key question is what to do next; in other words, how to implement a true strategic spend visibility initiative that will return value and keep returning value over time. There are too many spend visibility products that are lying unused or on the shelf, after the first burst of excitement has passed; and too many organizations who are tired of hearing a spend visibility message that has no further relevance to them.

The reality, as advanced organizations understand, is that:

      Strategic spend visibility is much more than building a simple Accounts Payable cube, and that analysis of spend requires deep thinking on many dimensions, along with many different analysis cubes.

And the real question is:

      How is this to be accomplished? Although much of the strategic spend analysis “lore” has been locked up inside consulting organizations, this is starting to change. The hope is that this Guide will help to promulgate some of the key ideas around strategic spend visibility, and ideally point organizations toward strategies that can result in sustainable savings through a continuous succession of intelligent spend control initiatives.

And that’s why it’s being made available to you completely free. No pay wall, no registration wall, and no restrictive distribution license. In order to advance spend analysis and spend visibility to the next level, you need to understand what it is. So download your copy of Spend Visibility: An Implementation Guide today. It will be worth the time it takes to read it.