Cirtuo | Strategic Business Alignment

Procurement is an organization’s window to the supply market.

What we see outside is not always sunshine over green pastures but an ever increasing complexity of internal requirements, external regulations, and market disruptions.

Balancing the needs & wants of the business with the realities of the market is the oath and calling of Procurement. To aid them, Cirtuo is building the only AI-powered Category Management solution that empowers Procurement to make holistic decisions in the most complex environments.

Category Management

A framework for making complexity manageable

Procurement has always tried to achieve multiple objectives simultaneously in complex market environments. Getting the right material for the right price in the right place at the right time has always been important and challenging. Yet, this objective has become more of a moving target as the interdependencies of the individual parts multiplied in hyper-globalized supply chains.

Category Management is a proven methodology for managing the various factors & variables influencing goods and services. The approach to cluster similar goods & services into categories and to formalize the capturing and structuring of relevant information has matured over the last three decades

Business Alignment

Business requirements are Procurement’s north star

Gathering information on internal requirements, spend, cost structures, suppliers, markets, and risk has been part of Category Management from the beginning. But requirements have expanded and businesses expect Procurement to help improve profitability and increase sustainability while diversifying the supply base and complying with increased regulatory requirements. This creates a complex environment for Procurement.
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Translating this complexity into relevant strategic options requires balancing different and at times opposing expectations. Unfortunately, the historic focus on cost reductions and defining strategies in isolation has positioned many procurement teams as tactical fire fighters rather than strategic business partners for complex challenges.

Strategic Alignment Matrix

Rallying Procurement behind business objectives

Creating alignment with business stakeholders firstly requires the identification of relevant stakeholders and the translation of their requirements for procurement. Only then can they be challenged, prioritized & de-conflicted based on procurement, market, and supply chain insights. These tasks heavily rely on the individual capabilities & soft skills of category managers, which complicates its consistent application.

To increase the strategic maturity of Procurement, Cirtuo has developed the Strategy Alignment Matrix (SAM). It is a practical framework for aligning business requirements across procurement - from category to supplier, and negotiation strategies. This approach sets the tone and direction for the entire procurement chain.

Becoming a
strategic business partner with holistic decisions

By embedding the ideas driving strategic business alignment in our AI-powered Category Management solution, we ensure a holistic perspective on business requirements and market realities and enable the consistent development of business-centric procurement strategies.
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This is how we enable holistic decisions in complex environments. This is how we make Procurement the strategic business partner it’s ought to be.

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Strategic Business alignment as enabler for holistic decisions