Sourcing Insights was co-founded in 2017 by a CPO who knew the importance of spend-based insights for Sourcing Success and a technologist who spent over two decades developing P2P analytics and audit software who both saw the need for deeper insights into organizational spend for strategic sourcing, especially in direct material industries (as most of the [leading] spend analysis solutions on the market was focussed on indirect spend or analysis at the category level). Together they built a hybrid company that offers a leading spend analytics solution as well as expert services that can get you started and make sure you get the value out of the solution that you expect.

In other words, while Sourcing Insights appears to be just another spend analysis company, it’s not just another spend analysis company. The reason being is that it supports spend by commodity and/or part based spend analysis of the box, tracks price movement at the part/commodity level out of the box, and the definition of commodity or part-based plans out of the box. But first, let’s cover the basics.

The entry point to SourcingShark is either:

• a customizable spend overview dashboard that not only summarizes spend by various dimensions (commodity, month, PO, supplier [group], etc.),
• a commodity dashboard that summarizes the commodity codes / parts in the system, associated contracts, purchase order, (potentially) duplicate invoices, and other spend metrics of interest to the organization,
• or a merged dashboard that combines all of this information into one dashboard and allows for filtering by commodity or organization (and soon to be organization/division groups)

From the supplier widget[s], you can dive into the vendor summary dashboard which can be configured to display the same information, but just on the vendor, or other vendor-specific information that we’ll discuss a bit later.

Before we dive into some of the more unique (out-of-the-box) capabilities of SourcingShark, we will note that they cover all of the basic out-of-the box reporting requirements that one would expect from a modern spend analysis application (for direct materials). This includes deep, customizeable dashboards for

• invoice spend (vendor type, vendor, cost center, GL, creator, company [if you have a multi-level organization]),
• PO spend (vendor, cost center, GL, company, part/commodity category, part/commodity, creator, etc.),
• Invoice Analysis, and
• PO Analysis.

However, the more/most unique capabilities revolve around (direct) vendor deep dives, part/commodity analysis (& price movement), and strategy insights.

When it comes to vendor deep dives, they have the following out of the box:

• Deep Vendor Management where you can track deep (SIM level) vendor details if you want to, map vendors to all of the commodities/parts they supply, associate them with contracts, quickly see spend-based summaries by part/commodity, by GL, or Company (if you are a multi-level organization).
• Vendor Score Dashboard which allows you to overview vendor performance as the platform can track on-time delivery, quality scores (based on disruptions, PPM, SCARs, etc.), commercial scores (based on supply agreements, cost improvements, financial ratings), and risk scores (if you have access to third party feeds to collect the appropriate data and define your risk model), and provide you with widgets to drill down into all of this data, which can also include metric-based summaries of all system data fields
• After-The-Fact Vendor Summary which presents a detailed summary of after-the-fact purchases

When it comes to part deep dives, they have the following out of the box:

• Spend Summary that summarizes the spend by part by vendor, invoice, amount, month, etc.
• PO Spend Summary that summarizes the spend by part by vendor, invoice, amount, month, etc.
• Price Movements that shows the price movement for (a category of) related parts over a time frame, with the ability to drill down by vendor, and see the potential savings if all parts were bought at the lowest price
• PO Price Accuracy Analysis that shows the percentage of vendors, POs, and invoices which were accurate (to the PO or Contract)
• Part / Commodity Deep Dive where you get just the part related spend and metrics, can define your part/commodity strategy, and track the success to that over time
• Exportable PO-Based Purchase Price Variance Analysis where, for each part/SKU in the system, you can get the PPV for the time-frame of your choice using actual PO data

As alluded to above, they also support contract metadata management which allows a user to define all of the relevant data for contract, and spend, analysis; associate those contracts with vendors and parts; and define contract summary / analysis dashboards and reports as needed.

And, with their new release this month, they now support Part/SKU Strategies where an organization can capture their current and future sourcing strategies along multiple key dimensions, including:

• target # of suppliers
• suppliers under contract (not necessarily the same, you may want a spot-buy supplier just in case)
• supplier reach (local, regional, national, international, etc.)
• primary supplier award / supplier split percentage
• desired volume incentive rebates
• PPP Trend expectations
• target savings

as well as track the project status, the communication status (with potential suppliers), the primary type of commodity sourcing strategy (contract renegotiation, multi-round RFX, etc.), and the primary price (commodity) driver, typically associated with a market index of the primary material (or material with the highest variability). It looks pretty basic when you first see it, but it’s incredibly powerful and useful and will likely evolve over time, especially when they add in full Bill of Material Support / (Sub) Assembly Support, slated for their next release (target 2024 Q1).

Finally, the team has the experience and the services to support your spend analysis efforts. They can handle all of your data refreshes, design your custom dashboards, and walk you through proper spend analysis methodologies, or even do the first pass for you, to make sure you achieve your organizational goals and have the knowledge you need to do spend analysis right going forward. Sourcing Insights might not be as old as the grandparent spend analysis vendors of the space, but they are already one of the best platforms out there for direct spend analysis.