The Challenge

A major manufacturing organization needed to create a single cockpit system which would help them study pricing information and expenditure patterns across their various business units and worldwide locations.

The current reporting system operated through manual processes which produced inconsistent results which restricted both transparency and negotiation capabilities.

Pain points

• The process of benchmarking became impossible because different organizations used inconsistent definitions and their data was not detailed enough.
• The system produced reports at a slow pace which resulted in the detection of opportunities only after they had already occurred.

Objective

The system requires a Power Apps application to establish a unified cockpit system which tracks all activities and choices made by users.

Our Role and Approach

Delivery + enablement

• The project achieved data harmonization through its creation of common terminology and data connection rules which established standardized KPI definitions.
• The system requires a dashboard construction that will create a Power BI cockpit which enables users to compare prices and spending levels through supplier and category and plant-specific drill-down capabilities.
• The system enables workflow management through Power Apps which tracks all activities related to opportunity management including approval processes and comment sections.
• The system requires governance through monthly performance assessments and KPI management to maintain user adoption levels.

Key findings/ Suggestions

• The system should include automated opportunity sizing functionality which uses should-cost analysis and variance-to-benchmark calculations to determine which negotiation areas need most attention.
• The system requires contract metadata containing terms and indexation information and volume data to perform better root-cause analysis.

The Result

• Cross-entity cockpit for competitive benchmarking + automated refresh.
• Improved ability to surface and track opportunities with workflow capture.

Quantified impact

• BI deployments have reported faster reporting cycles to less than 1 day.
• Pricing analytics benchmarks show margin uplift ranges of +2-7% points.
• Spend control tower governance has been associated with rapid indirect spend savings of 15-30% within the first month.