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Spend share, contract compliance and supplier concentration, the roll-up run the other way.
A sourcing dashboard brings purchasing spend, supplier concentration and contract coverage into one review. Work through a reconciled purchasing example and see which sourcing decisions the measures support.
Oct 25, 20265 min readIndirect spend analytics groups nonproduction purchasing by category, supplier, and budget owner. Follow a worked purchasing example to distinguish spending changes from classification changes and preserve the accounts payable total.
Oct 24, 20265 min readPurchase price variance compares actual purchase prices with standard prices at actual quantities. Work through a supplier and item report, reconcile the total, and separate price effects from quantity changes and invoice exceptions.
Oct 24, 20266 min readRetail replenishment predictions need testing at the store and SKU level. Compare a supplied forecast with observed sales and stock availability, reconcile the totals, and separate forecast misses from constrained sales.
Oct 24, 20265 min readPredictive analytics in healthcare supply chain needs validation against actual medical supply usage and inventory exposure. Compare forecast errors by item and facility, then examine shortages and expiration without hiding local exceptions.
Oct 23, 20266 min readSupply chain analytics in the pharmaceutical industry compares batch inventory, expiration exposure, and delivery performance by product and site. Follow a worked inventory reconciliation that keeps restricted stock and overlapping risk categories visible.
Oct 23, 20266 min readSupplier management analytics connects service, price, and terms evidence to recurring supplier reviews. Work through a purchasing example, reconcile the figures, and turn exceptions into actions with owners and closure evidence.
Oct 22, 20266 min readA contract management dashboard compares spending, upcoming decisions, and supplier delivery results. Build a reconciled view from contract records, invoices, and purchasing exports, with a worked example and checks.
Oct 21, 20266 min readBuild a procurement KPI register that names each input, denominator, owner and approved target. This reusable layout includes purchasing rows, spreadsheet formulas and reconciliation checks for a monthly review.
Oct 18, 20266 min readSupplier risk analytics combines observed service deterioration with purchasing exposure and dependency. Work through a supplier review queue, reconcile its inputs, and separate warning signals from unsupported predictions about failure.
Oct 18, 20266 min readA procurement category dashboard compares purchasing spend, supplier concentration and comparable price movements. Use a worked example to separate category priorities from changes in quantity and purchasing mix.
Oct 15, 20266 min readHealthcare spend analytics compares purchasing by facility, supplier, and category while preserving an accounts payable control total. Work through a facility comparison, a scope bridge, and the checks that keep purchasing changes separate from clinical or billing conclusions.
Oct 14, 20266 min readA procurement dashboard compares purchasing spend, contract coverage, and supplier exceptions on a reconciled basis. Build one from invoice lines and receipt records, with spreadsheet formulas, a worked layout, and checks that keep separate purchasing events from being counted twice.
Oct 14, 20265 min readHML inventory analysis groups items into high, medium and low unit-cost bands. Set documented thresholds, classify a stock export, and reconcile quantities and values without confusing HML with annual usage value.
Oct 12, 20265 min readProcurement analytics connects purchasing records to spending, contract compliance, savings, and supplier decisions. This guide explains the files, measures, owners, and checks using a worked purchasing example.
Oct 10, 20265 min readSupply chain cost analysis separates spending into consistent activity pools. Build a site comparison from ledger, purchasing, warehouse and freight exports, then reconcile the costs and their allocation drivers.
Oct 8, 20265 min readPrice comparison analysis puts supplier quotes on a common requirement and commercial basis. Compare order quantities, discounts, freight, and coverage exceptions before choosing an offer.
Oct 7, 20265 min readSpecify a procurement analytics pilot with reviewed AP controls, match exceptions, evidence coverage and buyer tasks instead of an uncheckable dashboard promise.
Oct 6, 20264 min readThe base stock inventory method replenishes inventory position toward a stated target. Compare supplied targets with stock, open orders, backorders, and the demand assumptions behind the protection period.
Oct 6, 20266 min readBuild a supplier-category-unit-period spend view from AP lines in Excel, retaining credit notes, unmapped rows and control totals.
Oct 6, 20264 min readBuild a category management report from purchasing exports, with comparable spend, a price-volume bridge, and supplier concentration. Use the worked tables and spreadsheet formulas to turn a monthly variance into a sourcing action.
Oct 6, 20265 min readDefine an AP net-spend basis for credits, tax and foreign currency. Reconcile synthetic invoice, credit and payment views under explicit policies.
Oct 6, 20264 min readSeparate like-for-like procurement KPI movement from definition changes, evidence corrections and denominator exclusions using an explicit bridge.
Oct 6, 20264 min readFind and resolve missing or overlapping invoice-contract matches without duplicating AP spend. Test dates, categories, units and evidence completeness.
Oct 6, 20264 min readCreate a dated supplier alias crosswalk without combining separate legal entities. Reconcile AP totals before and after normalization.
Oct 6, 20264 min readMeasure the time from a submitted requisition to a purchase order sent to the supplier. Define the business-day convention, calculate approval and release delays, and reconcile a completed-order cohort with exact spreadsheet formulas.
Oct 6, 20266 min readReconcile purchase commitments, posted invoices and cash paid without adding the same purchase several times. Show partial receipts and unpaid balances.
Oct 6, 20264 min readKeep missing contract evidence separate from confirmed unmanaged purchases. Report evidence coverage and managed-share bounds on a known spend perimeter.
Oct 6, 20263 min readSupplier KPIs connect delivery, quality, lead-time reliability, and purchase cost to clear denominators. Work through one supplier's records and see which team owns each measure and its exceptions.
Oct 5, 20266 min readSupply chain analytics uses operational records to explain service, inventory and cost performance. Learn which exports to bring, how to define comparable measures and how to reconcile a worked supplier comparison before acting.
Oct 5, 20265 min readCompare freight invoices across periods on a consistent shipment basis. Separate volume, linehaul rate, fuel, and accessorial changes, then reconcile the explanation to the invoice total.
Oct 4, 20265 min readCompare quoted and paid freight rates with lane, equipment, service, and surcharge bases visible. Use a fixed shipment basket to separate rate differences from changes in shipment mix.
Oct 4, 20265 min readRebuild closing inventory quantities from opening balances, receipts, issues, and signed adjustments. Work through a SKU and site reconciliation, compare it with a physical count, and separate stock on hand from stock available to promise.
Oct 3, 20266 min readEstimate average transit inventory from demand and transit time, then calculate an actual cutoff balance from shipment and receipt rows. Work through units, operational value, reconciliation checks, and the separate question of accounting ownership.
Oct 2, 20266 min readVendor performance analysis compares delivery, purchase cost, and quality using consistent transaction populations. Build a supplier review from purchasing and inspection exports, calculate each measure, and reconcile the totals.
Oct 2, 20265 min readUse a procurement dashboard workbook layout that separates purchasing, delivery, summaries, and checks. Follow the populated tables and cell formulas to reconcile spend by category and supplier without duplicating receipt records.
Sep 29, 20266 min readA cost savings dashboard compares purchasing costs with an agreed baseline on the same volume. Follow a worked savings bridge, reconcile it to invoices, and separate negotiated reductions from finance-validated results.
Sep 28, 20265 min readCompare approved sourcing baselines and contract terms with actual invoice lines. Work through realized price savings, contract variance and spend reconciliation without confusing volume changes with savings.
Sep 28, 20266 min readChoose a supply chain analytical method by the decision, the available files and the assumptions the evidence can support. Work service, inventory and cost measures from the same operating rows, then choose the next comparison.
Sep 24, 20265 min readAllocate transport, warehousing, and handling costs with documented activity drivers. Reconcile the result to the source cost pools and compare customers without confusing allocated cost with avoidable expense.
Sep 23, 20265 min readHealthcare supply chain analytics compares medical supply usage, availability, expiration losses, and supplier service by facility. Work through a reconciled inventory example and see which records explain each exception.
Sep 22, 20265 min readInventory assortment connects the products a store offers with how much stock each receives. Compare sales, SKU gross profit, stock depth, and unsold inventory across stores using a worked example and explicit decision checks.
Sep 21, 20266 min readSupply chain risk analytics combines stock cover, qualified sources, and delivery history to identify material exposure. Use a worked continuity review to rank actions, check the exports, and keep assumptions separate from observed facts.
Sep 19, 20266 min readSourcing analytics compares supplier bids at the same demand, specifications, and commercial terms. Build an evaluated-cost table, check it against existing spend, and test whether a quantity change reverses the decision.
Sep 18, 20265 min readSafety stock covers uncertainty beyond expected replenishment demand. Work through demand and lead-time inputs, compare service targets, and reconcile the buffer to a reorder point.
Sep 16, 20266 min readProcurement spend analysis starts with reconciled accounts payable lines and a consistent purchasing scope. Follow the export, mapping, comparison and review steps, with spreadsheet formulas and a worked example.
Sep 14, 20265 min readCalculate printing cost per page from supply consumption, maintenance, equipment charges and meter readings. Build a consistent office comparison, distinguish printed sides from paper sheets, and reconcile the result to your cost workbook.
Sep 12, 20265 min readCompare logistics volume and transit forecasts with actual outcomes before using them in planning. This worked example measures error, bias, and performance against a simple baseline, with checks on forecast timing and shipment coverage.
Sep 5, 20265 min readSustainable supply chain analytics compares material losses, waste destinations, and shipping activity using disclosed boundaries and supplied factors. Follow a worked site comparison, reconcile the quantities, and see which decisions the evidence supports.
Aug 30, 20266 min readThe honest answer to what share of spend procurement should manage: the 60 to 85 percent figures quoted depend on what managed means, on which spend is addressable, and on whether the figure is computed from invoices or claimed from contracts. This page gives the ranges by maturity, the three measurable things that set the right figure for one organization, and the table to compute before anyone quotes a percentage.
Aug 27, 20263 min readThe complete spend under management calculation on ten payables invoices, small enough to check by hand: each invoice's supplier, category, business unit and PO reference, the contract register's in-force agreements, the approved supplier list, the bucket per invoice, on contract, approved off contract, or unmanaged, the share by category and by unit, the uncategorized invoice that is its own finding, and the identity that the three buckets sum to total spend, so a reader can reproduce every figure and then run it on their own payables export.
Aug 24, 20263 min readThe ten KPIs a procurement function should run on, each with its formula, the export it comes from and what it tells you: spend under management by invoice, contracted share against actual spend by category, maverick spend by requester, savings realized against savings claimed, suppliers per category and the tail, payment terms compliance, supplier performance against own baseline, contract expiry coverage, price variance on like items, and supplier concentration. Also the three measures most teams miss, the figures to drop, the identities, and who owns what.
Aug 16, 20264 min readPurchase price analysis compares historical buying prices with current offers on reviewed units and commercial terms. Build a supplier, quantity-band, and period review that separates price evidence from changes in purchasing patterns.
Aug 10, 20265 min readExcess obsolete inventory analysis separates stock above approved needs from stock with no supported future use. Build a SKU-level review from on-hand balances, demand assumptions, and disposition evidence, then reconcile the categories to inventory value.
Aug 7, 20265 min readPredictive supply chain analytics estimates future demand, delivery, and service outcomes. Learn how to validate supplied forecasts against actuals, compare a baseline, and separate forecast error from operational performance.
Aug 4, 20265 min readSourcing KPIs connect event speed and supplier participation with awarded prices and actual invoice savings. Work through a sourcing scorecard, reconcile the savings gap, and assign each measure an owner.
Aug 4, 20266 min readProcure-to-pay analytics measures elapsed time and exceptions from approved orders through payment. Build a supplier and business-unit comparison from dated exports, with spreadsheet formulas and a reconciliation.
Aug 2, 20265 min readCompare shipment contribution and transit reliability by customer and lane using matched revenue, carrier-cost, and delivery records. A worked US freight example shows the calculations, reconciliations, and decisions behind the comparison.
Aug 1, 20266 min readCompare subcontractor bids on the same quantities, scope and allowances. Work through a bid-leveling table, spreadsheet formulas and the checks before an award decision.
Jul 29, 20265 min readHow a procurement team counts active suppliers per category from the purchase ledger, values the long tail in transaction cost rather than spend, finds the suppliers with one order a year that a contracted supplier could cover, and separates the tail worth consolidating from the specialist suppliers the tail is hiding.
Jul 28, 20262 min readThe ten questions a CPO puts to the category managers, how much spend do we actually manage, where is off-contract buying coming from, did the savings reach the ledger, how many suppliers are in the tail and which to keep, are we paying to terms, where is single-source risk, which suppliers are slipping, is the contract price being applied, which contracts expire when, and what changed, each with the computed table from the payables ledger and the contract register, the identity behind it, and the answer a CPO should not accept.
Jul 28, 20263 min readHow a procurement team measures spend under management from the payables ledger and its own sourcing records: spend on contracts procurement negotiated, spend on cataloged or approved suppliers, and spend that reached payables without procurement's involvement, by category and by business unit, why the third bucket is where savings claims fail, and the identity that ties the three to total third-party spend.
Jul 27, 20263 min readHow a supply chain team finds single-source parts, measures inbound concentration by supplier per site and watches supplier performance trends from goods receipts and the supplier master, with the reconciliation to goods received that makes the exposure figure defensible.
Jul 26, 20263 min readPrice analysis compares quoted totals on equivalent terms, while cost analysis examines supplied cost components and profit. Work through the same supplier quotes both ways and see which questions each method can answer.
Jul 24, 20266 min readSupplier diversity analytics compares purchasing by supplied, verified classifications. Work through spend reconciliation, overlapping classifications, business-unit comparisons, and the treatment of missing or expired evidence.
Jul 24, 20266 min readHow a procurement team, or the finance team checking it, measures whether a claimed saving reached the ledger: the baseline price per item before the sourcing event, the contracted price after, the invoiced price actually paid per line, the volume that moved to the contracted supplier, savings claimed against savings realized per category and per project, the leakage between the two by cause, and the identity that ties realized savings to the difference in what was paid.
Jul 23, 20263 min readEconomic order quantity balances annual ordering and inventory holding costs. Work through the formula, compare purchase quantities, and check the assumptions against your demand and cost exports.
Jul 18, 20265 min readABC supplier analysis groups suppliers by their share of annual purchasing spend. Build a ranked table from accounts payable records, apply explicit cutoffs, and reconcile every tier to the source total.
Jul 17, 20266 min readHow a procurement or treasury team measures actual days to pay against the terms in each supplier's contract, from the invoice and payment ledgers: the suppliers paid well before terms, the working capital that early payment ties up, the suppliers paid late who are charging for it in price, and the identity that ties the days-to-pay figure to the payables ledger.
Jul 14, 20263 min readWhy category-level compliance figures hide the real finding, how a procurement team breaks off-contract spend down by site and requester from the purchase ledger, the three patterns that account for most of it, and the conversation each pattern needs.
Jul 11, 20263 min readProcurement cost analysis compares purchase prices with freight, handling, and transaction costs on the same basis. Build a supplier comparison from purchasing exports, apply exact spreadsheet formulas, and reconcile the result to its source records.
Jul 8, 20266 min readBuild a supplier performance dashboard from receipt, inspection, and invoice exports. This guide gives the layout, spreadsheet formulas, a worked comparison, and the checks that keep the totals right.
Jul 1, 20266 min readAssess supply chain reporting through input reliability, reconciliation, repeatability and decision ownership. Use an evidence-based scoring table, spreadsheet formulas and improvement gates for recurring plant and supplier reviews.
Jun 29, 20265 min readThe bullwhip effect occurs when upstream orders vary more than customer demand. Work through a variance comparison, identify the ordering decisions behind the pattern and learn which export checks make the result trustworthy.
Jun 28, 20265 min readHow a procurement team measures contract compliance from the purchase ledger: spend by supplier against the contracted share per category, off-contract purchases by site and requester, single-source exposure, and the reconciliation to accounts payable.
Jun 25, 20263 min readCritical spares analysis combines usable stock, issue history, supplier lead times, and owner-approved downtime assumptions. Use a worked inventory review and spreadsheet formulas to build a defensible purchasing discussion without predicting equipment failures.
Jun 24, 20265 min readSupplier evaluation compares evidence against criteria agreed before a sourcing decision. Use purchasing, receipt, and quality exports to calculate scores, check the weighting, and document the human judgment behind an award.
Jun 18, 20266 min readReview a supplier's liquidity, borrowing and cash-flow trends alongside your purchasing exposure. Use a consistent statement workbook to identify the questions procurement and finance should resolve before increasing commitments.
Jun 14, 20265 min readNormalize comparable supplier purchases to an approved reference unit before interpreting case-price changes or estimating a fixed-quantity scenario.
Feb 22, 20253 min readSeparate incomplete requests, review waits and returned requisitions before comparing approval turnaround or current open ages.
Feb 17, 20243 min readSeparate registration information waits, review decisions and supplier-master activation from first purchase or delivery timing.
Feb 19, 20223 min readIdentify dated purchase-order sequence exceptions while separating timestamp problems, approved exceptions and unresolved policy evidence.
Jul 21, 20194 min readBuild a traceable invoice candidate review that distinguishes repeated imports, legitimate recurring charges and unresolved document similarities.
Apr 7, 20163 min readSeparate invoice price, receipt quantity and document-link exceptions so a procurement review explains what evidence each discrepancy needs.
Jul 21, 20064 min read