On the last episode, we explored the criticality of vendor data for Source-to-Pay system benefits realization. On this episode, we widen our focus to see how you can quickly get value from the spend data you currently have in your organization to enable better decision-making.
In 10 years of working with clients on Procurement improvement mandates, I’ve never worked with an organization that had excellent spend data. For a multitude of reasons, organizations typically have their spend data all over the place. So, what’s the easier, fastest way to fix that?
To help me explore this subject, I am joined by Susan Walsh or The Classification Guru. She’s worked with dozens of organizations over the last 8 years to help them find invaluable insights in what they considered to be useless data. Data cleansing, classification & taxonomies are the name of her game and, in our chat, she shared her no non-sense approach to getting results on these fronts.
Show Notes
@5:36 – What value can businesses derive from spend data cleansing and classification?
@7:13 – What is the process to get from “dirty data” to gold mine?
@13:47 – Why someone like Susan can spot problems in your data you may not even be aware of.
@16:19 – What sort of tools should people use to cleanse and classify data? (Hint: It’s not Excel!)
@17:21 – How does someone like Susan get access to your data, systems, etc. to be able to execute cleansing and classification activities? How quick is the process?
@20:54 – Does using someone like Susan’s services require the purchase of product licences for data cleansing / classification tools (short answer: No)?
@22:17 – Once you’ve gone through the cleansing/classification process a first time, what are the steps to keep data quality levels high? How can an organization increase it’s maturity in this domain?
@24:00 – When you should turn to Data Classification instead of turning to a Source-to-Pay software implementation?
@27:00 – When should you use the United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC) txonomy? When should you not? When should you create your own custom commodity taxonomy?
OmniScope – Data Editor tool mentioned by Susan during the show.
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What have been your biggest challenges in trying to round up your spend data? In your opinion, what is the biggest hurdle to clear to put in place good data quality assurance processes in your organization? What other tools are you using to cleanse and classify your spend data? Let me know in the comments
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Intro music provided by hooksounds.com.
