Anyone who has come into contact with spend analytics knows they can provide clear information on spending activity. While that can be useful, the reason companies should care about these types of analytics is the information they can offer goes beyond just spending. Specifically, it can help a company increase productivity. It can also boost savings by making it possible to streamline existing purchase-to-pay practices.
How exactly can spend analytics help your business increase savings and streamline its practices? The answer is by identifying some specific areas that can be improved, which are:
Seeing Where Bottlenecks Are Happening
Broken processes are an unfortunate reality for growing companies. While some processes will break down over time, that doesn’t mean companies have to settle for them remaining that way. It is possible to fix any broken processes. The key is being able to pinpoint where exactly breakdowns are occurring, which is something that spend analytics can do very well. Whether it’s an ongoing delay with invoice processing or another type of transaction that is consistently held up, it’s generally not very hard to find a solution once a problem area is clearly identified.
Breaking Down Data By Location
It’s normal for different locations across a company to have varying financial conditions. But just as there’s no reason that a company has to settle for broken processes, profitability across all locations is definitely something that can be improved. If spend analytics reveal that a certain location is having major issues, the necessary resources can be put in place to fix it. And even if most locations are doing relatively well, having this information available makes it possible to create friendly competitions that will ultimately lead to better performance.
Process Invoices More Efficiently
If your company is using purchasing software, you have access to a lot of features that are specifically designed to streamline tasks like invoice processing. One thing companies often forget is having access to those types of features doesn’t guarantee that they’re being used to the fullest. With the help of spend analytics, you can find vendors that aren’t fully utilizing the features that are available to them and then streamline their processes by working with them to get fully onboarded.
Keep An Eye on Progress
Significant change isn’t usually something that happens overnight. Since it takes time to really move the needle in most areas within an established company, being able to use spend analytics to benchmark progress is quite useful. Not only can you benchmark your efforts internally, but you can also see how they stack up to other top-performing companies.
By using spend analytics to look at the areas highlighted above, your company can find the best opportunities to save more money and also improve your current purchase-to-pay practices.
