The Importance of Spend Visibility in Uncertain Times

For weeks, business activities have been scaled back in virtually every industry. Bottlenecks in the supply chain and hiccups in logistics are impacting an organisation’s ability to focus on the critical parts of their business. So how can procurement prioritise spend during these uncertain times?

Prioritising spend the right way

Recent developments have led to a palpable sense of uncertainty as we have no way to forecast how long the current economic circumstances will last. With most staff working from home, both procurement and finance departments have been asked to find new ways of working together to keep the organisation’s cashflow moving.

The combination of economic uncertainty, an abrupt change to the working environment, and other unfamiliar challenges, have forced many organisations to quickly begin prioritising spend. In an ideal world, this prioritisation is based on full spend visibility: when you know precisely where your organisation’s money is going, you can minimise maverick spending and increase spend under management.

Non-PO spend can threaten your financial visibility, supplier relationships & your business

Often orders from non-contract suppliers have lenient cancellation policies which put these suppliers at risk when reducing spend. Most non-contractual work is based on invoices and not on purchase orders (POs), quickly making these suppliers an easy target. However, without a complete picture of spend, the danger of eliminating a supplier that performs critically important functions for your business could be detrimental. Only with full visibility over both PO and non-PO spend, can your organisation prioritise the right suppliers.

Here are a few shortfalls you may be experiencing if you’re not capturing 100% of your spend data:

• It's difficult to know exactly what sort of spend has already happened and is going to happen in the future

• You can't forecast and plan for the future confidently

• It's proving difficult to gain control

What can you do to gain full spend visibility? 

Basware Analytics fully integrates with our e-procurement and AP solutions to capture direct and indirect spend, PO and non-PO spend, and even spend that does not originate within the Basware system. This immediately identifies areas for spend optimisation by bringing visibility to controlled versus uncontrolled spending. With this full picture at hand, you can concentrate on what you do best.

Benefits of 100% spend visibility:

• A holistic view of realised and committed spend in one place (both direct and indirect spending)

• Visibility into spend by organisation, category, supplier, cost center, codes, etc.

• Trends for controlled and uncontrolled spend

Take a look at this video, that shows how easy it is to gain full spend visibility with Basware Analytics.

We are here to support you

Keeping your business afloat in these difficult times is not an easy task. Our job at Basware is to minimise the complexity for procurement and AP processes – so you can concentrate on making the right business decisions. We would love to show you in detail how we can support you and your organisation. Click here to book a demo.