Here’s a quick example of how spend management can be a competitive advantage.
(Which in this market can seriously be life or death for a company).
Every month I do a 30 minute Spend Review with our Head of Procurement Strategy, Michael Shields. Running this process out of the Tropic platform a year ago would have been nearly impossible: too many sharp edges, data inconsistencies, and enough question marks to cast doubt on the whole thing.
Thanks to the constant feedback from our customers, the vigilant efforts from out GTM teams to advocate for feature gaps, and the diligent work from our design, product, and engineering orgs, last week’s spend review was the first where I felt the full leverage of the Tropic platform to give me visibility into our spend, and control around where we’re spending.
These updates have allowed us to evolve from reactive to proactive purchasing, getting way ahead of our renewals, and maximizing the efficiency of our spend.
Here’s our process:
🔹 Step 1: Visibility into upcoming spend
Pull up my favorite report that shows a snapshot of the status of all upcoming Contracts in the next 6 months, and the status of those Contracts.
🔹 Step 2: Near-term pipeline health
We then look at contracts renewing in the next three months to determine the health of our pipeline
▪ Are we wrapped up on Contracts that are renewing in the next month?
▪ Are all Requests in for Contracts that renew in the next three months?
▪ Are we at risk of missing any key dates due to delays?
▪ Are the proposals we’re getting from our Suppliers fair according to our benchmark intelligence?
We can seamlessly answer these questions based on reporting views in Tropic, and compile a list of action items.
🔹 Step 3: Mid-term strategic purchasing
We look at contracts renewing in the 3-6 month range to critically evaluate needs over the next year. If we wish to move away from any of these tools, we need to start those conversations now, because it’s no small effort to remove an embedded software tool.
We’re still small enough of an org that I have a good grasp on how we’re using our big ticket tools across the org, and can push for a re-justification on spend where I may have questions.
🔹 Step 4: Action Items
Shields and I summarize the action items for this month and he takes next steps with each stakeholder.
It’s taken many months of banging our heads against the wall to get to this point. Next on the horizon, automating the entire workflow above with AI 😉