An elite club

Are you or your company one of the best in Spend Analysis?

Mike Verespej, Editor-in-Chief -- Purchasing, 12/9/2004

Honeywell, IBM, Intel, Lucent, Microsoft, PPG, Rockwell Collins. It's an elite group of companies—but not just for the high-quality products that they make. Those seven companies earlier this year were chosen as the first Heroes of Spend Analysis by PURCHASING Magazine.

It's your turn to join that elite group. In March, we'll present the next Heroes of Spend Analysis and give you insight into how those companies use purchasing as a competitive advantage.

How do you get to join that exclusive club? Compare yourself to this year's winners (March 18, page 28) and tell us why you're better. But just one warning. The bar is high. You'll need to be on the leading edge of procurement policies—simply capturing spend data or making transactions electronically won't suffice.

• Do you have a 360-degree view of your spend?
• Is there a linkage between spend analysis and corporate goals and performance measurements?
• How well does your data pinpoint opportunities for cost reduction?
• Is there visibility into your data for all your key suppliers, departments and extended partners in the supply chain?
• Is strategic sourcing recognized as a corporate objective?
• Are you creating lasting—rather than a one-time—savings?
• Does your system cover close to 100% of corporate spend—including consulting and other services?
• How well does your system insure that there isn't renegade purchasing outside the walls?

Not ready to be one of our Heroes of Spend Analysis just yet? Go through the assessment anyway to determine what you need to do to move purchasing forward in your organization. It will be a rewarding process that will pay dividends down the road.