SAP Reporting, What’s missing?

Add comment April 16th, 2008 Oscar Pacheco - Iasta

The recent article on improving SAP suite of product was a very interesting read, not because of what was written, but because of what was omitted.   A group of CPOs whose companies used SAP were having difficulty extracting consolidated spend information from their SAP system in different business units and lobbied SAP to improve the product to more easily obtain this information. 

Certainly a valid request that will prove useful to SAP users, but there is a large assumption that had been missed here.  The CPOs have assumed all of the data from the various systems is “good” data, meaning no duplicate supplier names, all commodity coding is correct, no strange transactions, data from one business unit means the same thing to all business units, etc.  If there is one thing for certain (other than death and taxes) it’s that data is never good and always needs a bit of cleaning. 

If, in fact, SAP does improve the system, the CPOs will be viewing and making decisions based on flawed information.  This is where spend analytics can help.  Spend analysis generally involves pulling the information out of the various systems (SAP, or any other data source), performing analyses on that data to improve the quality (such as consolidating the various data sources, consolidating vendors names, categorization, etc.) and then producing reports.  

These reports carry much more value and will represent a clearer picture of reality rather than a clouded view.  The cleansed information can be used by a variety of groups for various purposes, but is essential to the procurement organization.  It can allow them to track spend by categories, GL Account, business unit, region, supplier, and more, giving them the information they need to make the best decisions. 

Entry Filed under: General, Spend Analysis