Spend Visibility and Beyond -- Analytics Broader Role in Procurement and Supply Chain

Today marks an important milestone in Spend Matters' relatively brief history. We’re launching our second Compass research series. We’ve designed Spend Matters Compass briefs to deliver high quality and insightful research at a level that goes deeper than Spend Matters, the blog, could ever do. It also forces us to stick to a yearly editorial calendar. Two different people who’ve already read the initial briefs from the first series on services procurement collectively nailed what we’re trying to do when they both said: "AMR quality, Aberdeen business model."

I was tickled when I heard this quote -- twice. It's precisely what we're trying to do with Spend Matters Compass. Candidly, I don't think we're at the AMR level yet; nor, for that matter, do I think AMR will be at the AMR level for many more years, if you know what I mean. By focusing on depth and objectivity and offering a sponsor-supported model that provides download lists to providers and gives them exposure on the cover and last pages of each analysis, we’re able to offer up a level of research that practitioners and consultants would have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for in annual subscription fees anywhere else.

The theme of Compass Series II is: Spend Visibility and Beyond -- Analytics Broader Role in Procurement and Supply Chain. Based on this, you might have already guessed that the four-paper series is focused on spend visibility and analytics. In part, you'd be right. But we're actually exploring a variety of topics which we believe companies should examine together as they consider how best to deploy analytics within their procurement and supply chain organizations -- the "beyond" component of the series. In fact, the first brief that we're publishing in this series later today -- the rest of the series will be published throughout March, April and May -- is focused entirely on supply chain risk management and analytics.

If you’re curious, the four titles in this Compass Series are:

• The Intersection of Analytics and Supply Chain Risk Management -- Using Intelligence to Drive Early Intervention
• Beyond the Basics: Using Spend Visibility to Drive More Than Category Sourcing Strategies and Spend Reporting
• Analytics and P2P -- Using Spending and Payment Insights to Drive Savings and Working Capital Management Strategies
• Empowering Savings: Emerging Strategies for Providing Sourcing Professionals With Actionable Supplier and Supply Markets Intelligence

Check back later today to download the first brief, The Intersection of Analytics and Supply Chain Risk Management -- Using Intelligence to Drive Early Intervention. And join me in thanking Ariba, Bristlecone/SAP, Emptoris, Spend Radar and Zycus for underwriting our second Compass series as sponsors.

- Jason Busch