We could all use a Secret Weapon to ensure our Spend Analytics Implementation goes smoothly. But the fact is, you already have one. Here’s how to use it.

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Picture it:  Your Head of Procurement just asked you to run an implementation for a Spend Analytics Solution. Great! But in the back of your mind is the fact that 82% of organisations regret the software decision they made within 12 months of selecting it.

How will you confound the naysayers and make the new spend analytics solution something your business will love – and actually use? You’ve got all that spend data – how can its power be effectively unleashed?  You need all the munitions you can get … a secret weapon surely wouldn’t go astray.

The fact is, by making the decision to implement a Spend Analytics Solution, your organisation already has a secret weapon, to manage suppliers, track Procurement performance and ultimately help to decrease costs! Unleashing its true power is simply a matter of proper priming and skilful handling, and with it you can triumph over competition and defend against all manner of perils.

A Clear Picture

A successful implementation needs a stakeholder team that is highly engaged and committed to keeping the needs of your organisation top-of-mind. Yet SpendHQ found that communication is often poor, training is inadequate and planning for the handling of data after go-live is severely lacking.

To be effective the whole undertaking must begin with your team developing a formal project charter with clear objectives, timelines, roles and responsibilities all signed off and agreed. Developing the project charter will likely uncover unexpected benefits, possible obstacles and any unrealistic expectations regarding the purpose and intended use of your spend analytics solution ahead of time. 

SpendHQ Managing Director Kirk Poucher recommends team members take on specific roles  to ameliorate the process.:

• CPO/VP Procurement  >  Executive Sponsor
• Director/Manager  >  Project Leader
• Senior IT Lead  >  Technical Leader

Stakeholders from accounting, finance, category teams, or line-of-business leads from HR, Marketing, Facilities or similar can contribute via a Functional Stakeholder Committee.

Making sure key stakeholders are invested and accountable will secure their support for the project right through to the end. Further, a goal-oriented focus helps cut through the white noise of marketing collateral and sales speak during the vendor selection and initial stages of the implementation process.

Getting to know you 

Once your vendor selection is finalised, Kirk recommends hosting a discovery workshop with your chosen partner – a cross-functional strategy session with Procurement, Finance, IT and business leadership. A discovery workshop will ensure alignment and identify key objectives, team members, and constraints within an organisation. Take time to reiterate current pain points, identify gaps in existing processes, review the strategic objectives defined at the onset of the project, and clarify roles and responsibilities vital to supporting the implementation process.

Most importantly, this workshop must establish clear alignment around your category taxonomy. Its internal structure should mirror the organisation of the vendor base for each category. Each category should be intuitive, so they don’t need “translation.” Forbid categories that are not Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive (MECE) as this is the only way to establish a truly complete view of your total buying power in a category.

Dotting the Is, crossing the Ts

Your new spend analysis solution could prove a mere damp squib rather than a laser-focused secret weapon unless your data is primed and polished. This is no mean feat when data volumes are continuously growing, data systems are evolving, and buying patterns are shifting faster and faster. It only takes a simple cut and paste error to compromise your data – let alone misread descriptions and incorrect or limited taxonomies.

Although perfection may be an aspiration rather than a reality, any move towards this will significantly help your spend analytics solution.  More accurate data immediately means greater visibility across your business in several areas, allowing better decisions, time and cost savings, and increased profits.

With your secret weapon – spend analytics – your data can be further supercharged to be presented in a descriptive way that drives or enables action.  Descriptive analytics are useful and form the foundation for most Spend Analysis use cases.  And once descriptive processes are in place the next question is increasingly “what next?”  In other words, “what do I do next now that I have the information I need?”  How do we create insights from the data that allow us to derive actions that create value?  How does this information help us spend better, save more and limit risk?

Please sir, I want some more

Imagine the frustration of seeing an organisation abandon their new solution and returning to Excel. Having worked with over 500 procurement teams around the world, Kirk is well acquainted with the reasons so many Spend Analysis solutions leave their users wanting more: poor collaboration, inadequate training and lack of planning for what to do after go-live.

“If we did our job well in the requirements gathering and charter phase, the first challenge shouldn’t be an issue,” he observes. “Define and articulate what you want and ensure it gets memorialised into the SOW with the technology vendor”.

Since solutions are growing increasingly feature rich, you may require very specific (and perhaps intensive) training. During the RFP/evaluation process, make sure you understand the expectations of training that your team and the vendors may have. Do you expect there’ll be a set of dedicated internal power users, or will usage be democratised across the team? Will users receive live training or generic video recordings? What level of technical documentation is required and what is available?

And finally, you’ll know precisely what to do with your data after go-live if you’ve considered the rhythm of your business all along. How can you incorporate your spend analytics solution in your pipeline/planning process, category reviews and high-level goal setting? Establish from the get-go how to use this data and create confidence in its being a source of truth to ensure your team will hit the ground running.

A Solution without a user

A solution is only the right solution if it will be used! As with any big change, your people are at the heart of it. In his series “Major Tech Fails”, Matt Stewart emphasises the importance of knowing each user population – then you can understand any barriers they may have against adopting new solutions.

“Connect to their ‘why’ – what’s in it for them and their suppliers,” Matt recommends, “since during times of change, it’s critical to engage with the emotional side of the brain.” Similarly, understand their concerns, fears and frustrations around the impending change and work together on solutions they will “own.”

No change should feel like a bolt from the blue: be clear with users what the objective of the tech change is and ensure they are aware of the change ahead of time. Make sure the steps toward adoption are clear and that they understand the timeline. Comprehensive plans, training and support are key.

Prepared, primed and polished, your secret weapon is ready and you can immediately answer CFO’s questions and doubts! Use your weapon wisely to gain total visibility over your organisation’s spend as you build project pipelines and effectively deliver compliance, manage spend and see previously hidden spend reduction opportunities!  

Do you feel you would benefit from further “weapons training?” Or has something gone wrong and you need to get back to hitting the target? Register for our exclusive Spend Analytics webcast How to use Spend Analytics as your Secret Weapon now!