When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Go Shopping (around)

You've got to like a headline like this, regardless of the substance of the article. But the good news is that the substance of this article (from the Chronicle of Higher Education) is almost as good as the headline. For both universities and for commercial enterprises. Purchasing projects, especially for indirect categories, represents an excellent opportunity to improve the bottom line. These services can be bought from traditional consulting firms like Bain, McKinsey, or Accenture, and also from niche firms who specialize in only these Purchasing services.

Also interesting, though not in the Chronicle's article. is the potential synergy between improving Purchasing and CCM-T. In the last few years, we've had deep-dive meetings with a number of firms who specialize in SG&A cost reduction and vendor negotiation. It has become clear that among their most distinctive strengths are data analysis and vendor negotiation. Their projects are net cash flow positive, funded by realized, hard-dollar savings, paid on a contingent fee.

Once new contracts are re-negotiated, the firms review actual spending and compute realized savings, to compute their fees. Which represents the opportunity for CCM-T. Just as Visual Risk IQ has implemented CCM-T to review invoices and invoice lines for suspicious, fraudulent, or duplicate payments, we also can configure CCM-T to review invoice lines for rogue or unauthorized spending from non-preferred vendors.

So if you're a CCM-T user looking for improved business value from your implementation, or a finance, audit, or procurement executive looking to improve your bottom line through an evaluation of your Purchasing group, let us know. We know some great places to shop!

Joe Oringel
Visual Risk IQ
Charlotte NC, USA