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Turning accurate and relevant data into an obsession can transform cost management and enhance Procurement efficiencies
Marketing Procurement can leverage data to ensure continuous cost optimisation and reduce inefficiencies and improve decision-making and supplier relationships. With data designed to deliver relevant and timely insights, Procurement can reimagine its role within the business and enhance Marketing spend without compromising on budgets or campaigns.
There are several ways in which data can empower Procurement efficiencies.
Procurement Efficiencies Step 1: a deep understanding of what data-driven Procurement looks like.
Your Procurement teams need access to reliable, clean data which allows them to make informed decisions based on facts that are relevant to your business and brand. Having access to this data means Procurement has the space to explore spend from multiple directions, analysing the data to see how Marketing spend is working, identify bottlenecks and pain points, and assess agency and supplier performance.
At its core data-driven Procurement is a laser-sharp knife that slices through the limited visibility that has affected decision-making in the past. It cuts out the essential information needed by both Marketing and Procurement to ensure that transactions, suppliers, costs, markets and spend are aligned.
Procurement Efficiencies Step 2: transform an obsession into a success story.
Procurement is under pressure. Marketing wants bigger budgets, finance wants smaller budgets, and the brand wants growth. By becoming obsessed with the data, Procurement can consistently track, review, evaluate and assess spending throughout the Marketing team to identify inefficiencies and areas of improvement.
However, this obsession doesn’t have to be a time-consuming chore adding admin to Procurement and frustration to Marketing. If your data is accessible, relevant and reliable, you are instantly given the perfect microscope with which to assess each of these stages seamlessly.
Think of it as weaving data into your workflows. You can track spend because you have visibility into suppliers, agencies, Marketing campaigns and you can use the information to assess how well teams are meeting and managing their budgets. Added to this is the ability to use data to benchmark costs across geographies, agencies and industries. If you can see the average cost for an agency within a specific region and industry and compare that to your agency costs, you can immediately identify if you’re paying more than average, or if you’re on a par with other companies within your sector.
The cost savings here can be immediate and long-term. If your agency is over-charging or perhaps you identify areas where you can streamline spending, you have instant financial gains. Plus, you can use the data to forge stronger, more transparent relationships suppliers and Marketing. When everyone knows why you’re making a certain decision or how a specific cost-cutting endeavour will benefit them, then they are more likely to be on board and help drive the narrative forward.
Procurement Efficiencies Step 3: the power of implementation.
Now you have visibility into your expenditure thanks to the data, you need to find a way of using it to ensure long-term optimisation and value. You can identify inefficiencies and areas of improvement while ensuring supplier rates are fair and competitive and bedding down transparency, but if you don’t have execution, these insights will be little more than data points on paper.
With a data-driven mindset, Procurement can then sit down with Marketing and Finance to implement shared initiatives that use the data to refine budgets and approaches. When Finance can see how Procurement has realised savings, and Marketing can see how these savings will benefit Finance’s budgetary plans in the future, it presents an opportunity to collaborate on budgets and planning. An opportunity that sidesteps the traditional issues which often affect relationships between these departments because everyone is on the same digital, data-driven page.
Procurement Efficiencies Step 4: the value of patterns
Your commitment to cost savings through the use of data will reveal patterns in market dynamics, industry trends, Marketing spend, agency fees, and other critical areas of the business. These patterns will allow you to develop proactive strategies and become increasingly flexible in your approaches so spend optimisation isn’t a knee-jerk reaction to pressure, but a smart and strategic process built on relevant and realistic insights.
Perhaps the best part about data-driven cost optimisation is that it empowers Procurement to relish its obsession with costs without compromising on relationships, both internally and externally. It is also very easy to do with RightSpend.
We get data, and we get the need to be obsessed with costs and procurement efficiencies so you get the best results.