E-Sourcing Forum » It’s what you don’t know that costs you part 3: How new Spend Analysis Technology is bringing ROI faster with more visibility

It’s what you don’t know that costs you part 3: How new Spend Analysis Technology is bringing ROI faster with more visibility

April 8th, 2010 at 08:35am David Bush - Iasta

I would like spend some time to talk about what’s new in spend analysis technology and the benefits its providing to the market in terms of efficiency, visibility and speed to ROI.

Data Extraction and Importation

The biggest undertaking with older database driven technology is the time it takes IT to map corporate spend data to required predefined templates which allows the data to be imported by a spend analysis tool.

The new generation of data driven technology utilizes metadata to automate how spend data is organized. This architecture requires a minimal amount IT resources and can simple accept an export of data that includes the column header.

Take the example of 4 source systems with the old technology. It I would take 1 day of extraction and mapping for each source file. That is a total of 4 days. With the new technology it takes a total of 2 hours per source file. So, to start your project you have already saved 3 days in time and can now move on to the next phase in a shorter time frame.

Data Consolidation and Integration

The biggest improvements in this area allow for the data to be assimilated within the tool compared to outside the tool. In addition, the new technology allows for users to create associations across a virtually unlimited number of data field associations. Bottom line IT exports the data files and they get directly imported into the spend analysis tool and the data associations

The old technology required different data files to be consolidated and normalized outside the tool prior to the file being imported. This was usually done by IT and was a costly and timely effort.

Again taking the example above with 4 source systems, it would take a total of 8 days to extract, map and load the data files. The new technology shrinks that time to 3 days. Now in our example we have already accelerated our project by and ROI by 8 days.

Cleansing and Categorization

This area is where the ability to provide higher classification rates in greater detail has provided huge advancements in spend analysis. The new tools have evolved to include thousands and thousands of structured rules and cleansing routines. These routines and rules continue to evolve and grow with every project that is created. These improvements make the entire process repeatable and therefore scalable. As a result, process time is compressed and support costs are dramatically lowered.

Reporting and Analysis

The new reporting tools are built with the end user in mind. Faster access to information they need with drill down capability. Standard ad-hoc reports and the ability to create custom reports at will. The benefits of the new reporting are simple: self sufficiency, ease of use and faster analysis for projects and business decisions.

In end, spend analysis is about visibility to harness savings and speed to ROI. The new technology condenses the project time frame dramatically, increases classification accuracy and provides a fast self sufficient reporting tool. For more information about this topic, please download the wiki white paper located on the side bar of this blog site.

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Entry Filed under: Functionality, General, Spend Analysis, Technology / SaaS

1 Comment Add your own

1. Spend Analysis Tools | May 19th, 2010 at 9:22 am

I think the use of spend analysis tools is vital, and i am glad that more people are starting to see the benefits to ROI of incorporating it.

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