In times of uncertainty and rapid change, whether in sales, operations or spend management, fortune favors those who are positioned to confidently take decisive action and efficiently execute decisions.

For Spend Management organizations, spend data is the currency that allows us decide with confidence and move quickly to implement changes to our supply base. Time and again, however, access to data is cited as one of the greatest challenges in Spend Management. Even if you have the data, isn’t it what you do with it that makes all the difference? And despite great advances in Spend Visibility solutions, that give us ready access to that data, the tools don’t run themselves.

Spend Visibility programs require the same programmatic focus to be successful as any Spend Management initiative. SV programs combine aspects of technical deployment - getting the right fields from the right systems into the tool - and operational and strategic know how to get the right reports to the right people at the right time in order for them to act.

When building your organization’s Spend Visibility Capabilities, you can help yourself by thinking about it in 3 “phases”:

1. Design. Design is both a technical and operational concern. What systems will the data come from and how will they be mapped so I can see all of my spend in one place? How will we evaluate the quality of data we are importing and how can we make it better? What are the spend analytics we want to influence and create common understanding about within our enterprise?
2. Execution. How do I plan have the data analyzed once it is in the tool? What reports supporting what supply management objective will be crucial to my success? When will I run these reports and who will run them? Am I trying to reduce the number of suppliers? Am I trying to increase compliance? Am I trying to get a view of how much exposure I have with a supplier that appears to be headed toward bankruptcy? Will reports be standardized and made available to certain groups or ad hoc reports created by virtually anyone? If your organization suddenly has ready access to consolidated spend data and analysis tools, fundamental questions of execution need to be answered make sure that data is used and used well.
3. Competency & Adoption. Now that we know what we want our organization to do, how do we get them to do it? How do we get better data into the tool faster?

Spend Visibility is the motor oil that helps keep the Spend Management initiative engine of their revving at high RPM. Our new white paper A Programmatic Approach to Spend Visibility Success has a lot of great information for any company looking to unlock their data and leverage the analysis for strategic decision making.

And if you’re interested in hearing from one company that used its SV Program to make a difference, join my colleague Ken Miklos as he hosts a webinar with Del Monte’s James Stokes, the Senior Manager for Strategic & Global Sourcing, for a webcast this Thursday (register here).

Justin Sullivan is a Senior Manager in Ariba’s Spend Management Services Group. In addition to his strategic sourcing and technology expertise, Justin worked for a number of years in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where he analyzed the fiscal implications of Federal policy.