Tools for Fixing Your Bloated Budget

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Drilling down into budget line items can seem more challenging than drilling the Russian Kola Superdeep Borehole, the deepest hole ever drilled. Analyzing large budgets and determining complex sourcing needs using 20th century technology like spreadsheets could be as impossible as digging the seven mile deep Kola Borehole with a shovel. A strategic sourcing tool can give you the technology and ease of use you need to make the difference in all steps in the sourcing process.

Spreadsheets Aren’t Up to the Task

Excel and similar spreadsheet programs were not designed to handle millions of records or aggregate data from a variety of internal and external sources. You may be watching your budgets grow each accounting period, but you cannot pinpoint sources or develop strategies for budget streamlining, reducing costs, or increasing efficiency. How can you fix budgets that are ever-growing and move them back in the right direction? Realize cost savings across your enterprise through a strategic sourcing tool like FlexRFP™.

An excellent strategic sourcing tool will offer a variety of tools and functionality to manage bloated budgets, reducing costs and increasing profitability across divisions.

Aggregate Data With FlexRFP™

Budgets draw from a variety of source data, internal and external. Analyzing and combining diverse reports from divisions and departments, including travel and expense reports, ERP, P-Card, shipping and receiving, can be at-best confusing without the right tools. Identifying patterns of expenditure and analyzing relationships across departments or divisions could be the key you need to unlock stubborn budget problems. FlexRFP™ enables the user to aggregate diverse data and reports on a single screen, providing a multi-dimensional view of the underlying information that builds your budget.

Customize and Analyze Datasets

Part of your success is tied to developing data deliverables for budget baseline development and spend analysis. You need a strategic sourcing tool that can help you put your skills in data analytics to work, not an “out of the box” solution designed for a different enterprise. In today’s fast-paced global environment, a solution that worked for another company even six months ago will be out of date. You need flexibility, power and ease of customization to select variables for analysis today and get results as soon as possible. As just one example, FlexRFP™ enables you to filter reports by cost center alone, supplier and cost center, and supplier, cost center and commodity.

Support Continuous Improvement

All the data analysis you can perform is of little benefit if you can’t put it into action and measure deliverables and performance over time. FlexRFP™ provides the support you need for data mapping across your enterprise, because it was developed by former Fortune 500 sourcing professionals. In contrast, some strategic sourcing tools are developed by individuals in the IT industry who haven’t successfully integrated real-world continuous improvement and mapping into their products.

Time-Critical Results

A traditional spend analysis can take weeks, months, and in the case of some companies, even years to prepare. FlexRFP ™ is fast, responsive and flexible enough to provide a high-quality spend analysis in three weeks or less. Refinements to classifications, hierarchies and relationships can be made in real-time, dramatically reducing republish cycles and enabling quick incorporation of stakeholder feedback. FlexRFP™ also saves time because it is simple to use and intuitive, using similar skills to Excel and other spreadsheets. You and suppliers can use it with equal ease and effectiveness. It is a strategic sourcing tool that will let you capture and use data to manage budgets without requiring you to make changes to your current process and enterprise needs.