Is There Another Way To Handle Spend Analytics Solutions?

What You’ll Hear About Spend Analytics Solutions…

When it comes to Spend Analytics, it is easy to find a myriad of articles and research that clearly demonstrate the benefits that you can see by incorporating a spend analytics solution within your organization. From hard dollar savings to mere increased visibility, spend analytics is really a ‘must-have’ when it comes to gaining control of your organizations spend to produce substantial savings.

In addition to the countless articles and research that demonstrate the benefits of spend Analytics, you can find an equal number of articles touting why a particular Spend Analytics solution or vendor is the best out there.  Some will tell you that the best way to classify your data is through the use of algorithms and code that they have developed over years of experience.  They will sell you the benefits of these re-usable algorithms and the scalability of their offering.

Others will attack these solutions as being ‘one-size-fits-all’, and advertise their solution of using experienced resources to classify your spend.  Some companies even offer a hybrid approach of custom built rules that try to take the best of both approaches.

The reality is all strategies have their advantages and disadvantages.  Every vendor can tell you why their methodology is the best way to go and they all have their valid points.

They’ll All Tell You Don’t Go The In-House Solution Route…

The one thing all of these vendors will agree upon is the fact that you shouldn’t use an ‘in-house’ solution.

You need to send these vendors your data.
You need to rely on their methodology and taxonomy.
You need to use their reporting.
You need to keep them on the payroll as long as you hope to gain the benefits of their solution.

After all, they are “the experts”.

They’ll tell you that if you attempt your own in-house solution, you will likely fail, or produce an inferior solution that could possibly take years in developing, in which case you will not see the benefits that are so clearly possible from implementing a Spend Analytics solution.

This is a common refrain from most Spend Analytics providers.

For the most part, this criticism is accurate.  In-house solutions can be difficult to build, hard to maintain, and are typically developed from an IT perspective without consideration of the fundamental best practices in Spend Analytics from the business side.  A successful Spend Analytics solution needs to bring together the technology and the business.  Too often, a Spend Analytics solution becomes just another IT project.

Does It Have To Be This Way?

It’s understandable that businesses want an in-house solution, but are too hesitant to do it on their own. But does all this mean that the future of Spend Analytics being tied to a provider in perpetuity or building your own subpar solution from scratch?

What if I told you there is another way?

What if someone provided the technical solution and the experience within spend analytics to help you implement your in-house solution?  A solution you own, manage and implement.  A solution that overcomes the hurdles of extensive IT development and works with you to implement best practices around spend analytics.

There is another way. You can have an in-house solution.

An In-House Solution That Works

Implementing a successful spend analytics solution does require expertise, but that doesn’t mean the only path to that expertise is to outsource the process, management and maintenance to another company.  Working with a partner that can assist you with the development of the solution and then help you navigate the process of implementation and management can help you avoid the pitfalls and provide you ultimate ownership of the solution. You can have an in-house solution.

For too long, the answer the market has provided to the difficulty of Spend Analytics has been “Trust ME to do it for you.”

Instead, we believe a better way to move forward is to offer the answer: “Let me help YOU to develop a successful solution.”  And that’s exactly what SpendView does.

SpendView is a comprehensive Spend Analytics solution that consolidates, cleanses, and classifies all spend-related data in one place, giving organizations full visibility across all of their spend. With SpendView, take control of your spend, make better purchasing decisions, and identify savings opportunities that directly impact the bottom line.