Customer Reviews

Spend Analysis: The window into strategic sourcing

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Spend Analysis is a superior book on the subject of Strategic Sourcing. If your interest is to find massive cost savings for your business then this book is for you. The authors detail every aspect of spend analysis in an intelligent and myriad display of awareness on the subject. Mr. Pandit and Dr. Marmanis are clearly leaders in this field. A rare opportunity exists to absorb their knowledge and apply spend management to your ROI as you never thought imaginable.

As a finance officer, this book provided me a unique blend of technical and business descriptions in the field of procurement, supply chain, and operations. Each chapter is divided into three equal parts explaining the business concepts, technical analysis and case study examples. It combines all the ingredients that naturally constitute a successful business book.

I literally read this book over the course of one day. After words I distributed copies to my finance department and data warehouse employees. The book provides insight into spend analysis at three levels. First, spend analysis business model concepts. Second, a practical and highly useful approach to the implementation of spend analysis. Third, vital methods on how to interpret the information so as to achieve a significant advantage over your sourcing partners.

For example, first the book translates abstract ideas into rich comprehensible models such as the "hypercube". A plethora of data exists in our procurement systems that on the surface are difficult to extract in a meaningful way. The spend analysis models help transmute your perceptions of the transactional data into high quality information. Second, the case study about the agrochemical business proves beyond a doubt that the authors have not only thought about the ideas but are real life implementers of Spend Analysis. Just review for yourself the project plan requirements, principles and detailed data structure solutions . Third, this book will guide you through the process of finding "Opportunity Identification". These are critical hidden values that will strengthen your negotiation opportunities. Ultimately, from my experience this is the end game.

Finally, in today's difficult economy "Spend Analysis" will help your organization save money. This book couldn't have appeared at a better time. Now is the time to start implementing some real cost savings for my fortune 500 Company.

This is the best book on the subject of analyzing expenses; in fact, it is the only book that covers this subject!

I have worked for over three years in spend analysis from a technical perspective, so when I found out that a book on the subject was finally published I decided to give it a try.

The pace was right, and smooth, because the authors anticipate a lot of the questions that a reader may have. The book covers both the business aspects and the technical aspects of conducting spend analysis. If you are a commodity manager, you should memorize chapters 4 and 7! If you are responsible for data warehousing , part II of this book is a must-read, even if you do not work on spend analysis or sourcing! If you are new to procurement, Part I of this book will introduce you to the subject of spend analysis and its value. If you are an experience procurement person you will find this book invaluable for its insight and depth.

The book is great for anyone who feels that they need to advance their skills in sourcing and, especially, strategic sourcing.
I've read short reports on spend analysis before (from Aberdeen, Gartner, etc.) but it never sank in. What's great about this book is that
the authors give very clear definitions of key terms and then they take you step-by-step through each topic and how it is reflected in the real world cases.

Despite the great breadth and depth of the book, it is not too long, it is succinct from start to finish. This allows you to go quickly through the entire book; but yet, if you read a couple of chapters a second time, like I did, you will be able to get even more out of the book the second time! That's awesome!

The book is a bit expensive for a technical person but its value is far greater than its price. It is an excellent book of enormous value and I highly recommend it.

Spend Analysis: The Window into Strategic Sourcing is the ultimate handbook on spend analysis for firms who are looking at spend analysis software solutions to better understand their procurement spend and pursue opportunities such as leveraging of purchases, supplier consolidation, parts rationalization, reduction of maverick spend, contract compliance, etc. The book also provides a detailed guide for those companies who currently have a spend analysis solution and are looking for approaches to further improve its deployment and use and its return on investment. Using numerous company case studies, the book addresses the issues and challenges that real-world companies have faced as they tackle the question of exactly how procurement dollars are spent and the financial payback for gaining a better understanding of this spend. I liked the way the book is organized so that both those in management and those who are doing the actual detailed implementation work can find pertinent information. If your company is involved in or considering a spend analysis initiative, this book is a valuable resource.

This book covers both the basic and advanced areas of Spend Analysis. Based on what I saw in the 4 years of working in this area, there are various complexities involved in rationalizing and enriching transactional data. The authors have discussed these challenges and their possible solutions in the context of data analysis. The first part of the book discusses the business case for Spend Analysis and why it is important. Overall, the book will be valuable to anyone who is either a beginner in the area of Strategic Sourcing, or someone who has been in Strategic Sourcing but wants to understand Spend Analysis.

When managers at top companies like Ford, Honda, Toyota, HP, start to look at where their money goes, they focus on areas that they know control 90% of their spend. Spend management and spend analysis go wide and deep, way beyond the single-digit savings so arduously sought in many mfg. focused lean initiatives. But to do good spend management, as Dorian Shainin hammered into us at Rath & Strong, "you mustThe Big Squeeze: Ten Ways to Cut Your Spend 10% Right Now!let the data lead you." That takes good analytics, comparative cost numbers. Customers in automotive, for instance, should know better than their suppliers, when they design a new vehicle, what the exact costs will be for labor, materials, rework, scrap, etc., BEFORE they release a design to production where it's too late and too hard to achieve significant cost savings. Spend management is not lean purchasing, it is detailed knowledge of costs. That's why DAve Nelson and I want to see more and more of these books that offer great approaches to the analytics. There is no other way to achieve significant, lasting, double-digit and deliberate cost reductions. Patricia E. Moody

As a specialist in this field, I am very pleased to have found a book that summarizes all the processes required to implement a sourcing strategy - starting with Spend Analysis. The book is well structured and takes you to a journey of implementation of Spend Analysis and the requirements to do it in your corporate environment and the considerations for selecting a suitable provider to do the bulk of analysis, structuring and cleaning of databases from all your current systems.

As a member of Supply Chain Council, I recommend this book to all CEOs and supply chain profesionals who want to know step-by-step the process that can bring multimillion dollar savings to all corporations, I am very impressed with the savings power of this tool, none of the Six Sigma projects which I lead in the past, have the potential of SA for cost reductions that really impact the bottom line and that can be measured as direct contributions to profitability of the professionals who master these techniques and the people who champion these methods within any corporation.

I have used Spend Analysis in large supply chain organizations and have realized multimillion dollar savings in transportation, insurance and logistics service providers on a worldwide basis. Plus the product sourcing advantages that can be found by implementing sound sourcing strategies.

I highly recommend this book to all CEO's who are starving with ideas to improve their current operations, make sure to get the best people in the market to help you in the roll out.

I found the material in this book educational and insightful. I come from a content enrichment background, and I thought the authors did a good job addressing the nitty-gritty details of how content is cleansed and enriched, and why that is important for accurate Spend Analysis. I also thought the authors put forth a compelling argument why a good Spend Analysis program is critical for an effective Strategic Sourcing program. I particularly liked Chapters 2, 3 and 4. Some of the ideas and reports presented in Chapter 4 are very good. Many practitioners who are not familiar with the details of Strategic Sourcing would probably think that Spend Analysis is a simple reporting project that can be accomplished in a few days/weeks. This book brings to bear the complexities and challenges in doing that, and why it is not that simple.