Discover the benefits of Category Management with Unit4 Supplier Management
Procurement data can have many aspects that are hard to keep track of. Procurement teams may struggle with the degree of data they need to deal with, leading to analysis paralysis.
Utilizing category management as a strategy means procurement teams can break down their data into more manageable chunks, essentially deconstructing the supply chain, to allocate resources effectively, deal with priorities efficiently, and align with corporate objectives.
In this blog, we will explore category management, why it's an effective strategy for procurement teams, and how Unit4’s digital Source-to-Contract solution can make category management a reality.
What is category management?
Category Management is a strategic approach to procurement, teams can segment their resources on certain categories to ensure that they are optimized effectively. A strategic approach is needed to ensure resources are allocated practically, costs are kept low, and time-to-value is upheld.
For example, category management could include splitting direct and indirect products and inventory or splitting products, inventories, or services by value, vendor, type, or volume.
Category management starts with digitization, procurement teams need a central repository for all their procurement data so it can be split into the relevant categories they need. Legacy systems will obstruct category management through disparate systems, data siloes, and poor visibility of procurement data.
What are the main benefits of category management?
Spend Insight
Strategic category management can help to facilitate a more nuanced and in-depth understanding of your spending habits and form more detailed strategies to optimize spending.
With the right type of software, you will be able to configure your supplier data to get a full picture of your supplier base and understand where you can start making gains and cutting costs.
Streamlining procurement processes makes it easy to see vendor contracts and understand where you could be making marginal gains; You can identify irregular spending areas that need adjustments so you can start cutting costs and forming strategies.
Better Supplier Relationships
With a structured plan, your organization can recruit, evaluate, and onboard new suppliers as efficiently as possible, collaborate and communicate with suppliers in a personalized way, and create opportunities for shared growth. You can also make decisions about suppliers based on transparent, reliable data.
When it comes to vetting suppliers, a category management approach means procurement teams can gain a better understanding of the kinds of requests for information that work, whereas this insight is hard to gain when looking at supplier relations generically.
See S2C in action
In just a few clicks, you can watch short on-demand demos, to match your organization’s procurement priorities.
Improved collaboration and innovation
Strategic category management makes it easy to collaborate with your suppliers. Negotiation, conflict resolution, and relationship management are all made easier with a structured approach that emphasizes building sustainable supplier relationships.
By applying resources to distinct categories, procurement teams can better understand their supplier needs to identify areas for shared growth.
How can Unit4 Source-to-Contract make category management a reality?
With Unit4 Source-to-Contract’s Supplier Management module, you can centralize supplier data to streamline information and performance management providing the central data repository you need to achieve category management. You can easily access, report on, get granular with your supplier data thanks to configurable dashboards and numerous supplier segmentation options.
With Unit4 Supplier Management procurement teams can remove 65% of the manual workload through automated category-specific supplier onboarding workflows. Your procurement teams also gain deep visibility of your supplier base, safeguard your flow supply, and react quickly should you need to.
To learn more about the Unit4 Supplier Management module and our Source-to-Contract solution, visit our dedicated webpages, read our customer stories, or talk to sales – today!
