Analytics Content

Specialized spend analysis tools have been around for a long time – almost fifteen years. On a webinar today, Vote For Visibility: Yes, Procurement and […]

Spend Matters is hosting a webinar later this week titled: Vote For Visibility: Yes, Procurement and Data Can Dance. It’s taking place Wednesday, March 27, […]

SAP just acquired supply chain planning vendor SmartOps. SmartOps and Optiant came onto the supply chain scene over 10 years ago, and there were a […]

Over on Spend Matters PRO, Pierre Mitchell and I have spent quite a bit of time writing about what might seem like the dreary subject […]

In the first installment of this Procurement Information Architecture series, we discussed the importance of procurement developing a procurement information architecture (here) and also two […]

The good news with MDM applications (and analytics) is that they are bona fide “composite applications” that can fill in the holes of the incomplete data models of your existing applications, and allow you to not only fix the data at the source to reduce downstream transactional errors and also improve analytic capabilities, but they also allow you to more strategically manage your “information supply chain” next to your physical value chains. And who wouldn’t want to do that?

Continuing on with our rapid scan of SciQuest product innovation areas, the individual product teams have been hard at work. Contract management enhancements, for example, […]

(Part 1) Wouldn’t it be great to have access to a vendor rating solution that tells you how a given technology provider performs – something […]

Earlier this winter, Spend Matters published a review of Iasta’s latest foray into the procurement, finance and supply chain analytics market (here and here). Having evolved from […]

In strategy and footprint, Iasta appears closest to BravoSolution, a provider that has also prioritized a combination of organic solution development, high-touch customer sales and account management, and surrounding sourcing and procurement transformation services under its solutions umbrella. Yet Iasta is anything but copying from another singer’s songbook, despite the logical comparisons. Rather, Iasta is pursuing a strategy with different elements intersecting in various ways to point them down a somewhat unique path. Before exploring these, though, let’s step back for a minute and review Iasta’s capabilities and background.

Breaking up the analytics solution for greater design flexibility Using a multi-part analytics architecture helps break the IT/Procurement logjam and provide more flexibility in vendor […]

In this second installment, we will discuss the value of breaking the analytics technology stack into different building blocks so that procurement and IT can be better satisfied in their individual goals. Although spend analysis is not even 10% of the overall supply analytics footprint, it is a good illustration of this concept. Here’s my ‘dummies guide to procurement analytics architecture’ in three layers.