Perfect spend data is neither realistic nor required. “Good enough” data is what is needed to get started with strategy creation. A reasonable level of completeness and accuracy for the prioritized categories is required to ensure that reality is reflected correctly in the basic data of the category. In case there are severe issues with the basic spend data, especially with regards to incomplete classification, Cirtuo can help deploy its AI-based spend classifier, which results in unprecedented speed, accuracy, and consistency in classifying spend items into categories.
In some cases, clients chose to engage specialized data management service providers – before or in parallel to a Cirtuo Guided Strategy Creation™ implementation – to improve their spend data quality across the board quickly. Cirtuo can assist in selecting capable service providers for this task if required. Don’t worry about the category tree; most of our clients didn’t have an optimal category tree before starting the project with Cirtuo.
Your tree needs to reflect your procurement organization’s business needs and capabilities. It’s essential to approach it strategically and develop it correctly regarding priorities, competencies, organization traits, processes, methods, and tools. Therefore, building a category tree that is as optimized as possible should be a strategic activity that can be carried out during your Cirtuo project. Once you enter the strategic process, Cirtuo will help you quickly identify and fill in the gaps in your existing data classification.
To support the process, Cirtuo has integrated spend mapping, a functionality that allows your current ERP data to be mapped to the new strategic structure in the category tree. That means your ERP data structure can remain unchanged while you can build a different, strategic data classification in Cirtuo. The final result is increased data quality, which ensures better analysis and reporting. Ultimately, that leads to a better understanding of business requirements, which eases finding an optimal strategy for your categories and suppliers.
