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Procurement Intelligence Solutions for a Retail Company – A SpendEdge Success Story

Procurement Intelligence Solution Transforms Finance Operations and Enhances Supply Management

About the Client 

The client is an American multinational retail-clothing firm. With over 700 stores, the company employs around 57,000 people globally.

The Business Challenge 

With changing consumer behavior and technological innovations, retailers across the globe are uncovering new ways to sustain from the disruption. Moreover, retail brands are coping with a long-term uptrend in commodity and other raw materials input prices, and rapidly shifting global supply chain. These mounting global supply chain complexity with retail markets is forcing retail companies to be more agile and react faster than other players in the market. This is where procurement intelligence comes into play. In today’s competitive market scenario, procurement intelligence is the key to establishing long-term strategic sourcing and supply management plans.

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market intelligence

How Market Intelligence Can Dramatically Boost Your Supply Chain

The supply chain in modern companies is increasingly complex and dynamic in nature. From suppliers and industries to raw materials and commodities, there have been steady changes taking place across the supply chain of new age companies. Furthermore, the increasing uncertainty in the economic markets are forcing organizations to closely monitor market conditions and respond appropriately through improved supply chain strategies.

Traditional ERP systems are undoubtedly highly useful management tools, but they are mostly blind to external data. Their “inside-out” approach can leave companies inadequately equipped when planning and executing competitive supply chain strategies. However, with the advent of new market intelligence tools can resolve this problem. With the help of supply market intelligence, ERP systems can now incorporate real-time insights on suppliers, customers, and competitors, thus creating a perspective to reduce risk and create a competitive advantage. Here are just five benefits companies can realize with a market intelligence intelligence-driven supply chain.

Improved supply chain strategies

 It is vital to take into consideration the impact of potential events before undertaking supply chain planning. For instance, factors such as a sudden increase in demand, or in the event of any supplier undergoing a catastrophic event, companies must be able to be prepared to handle such situations. Market intelligence provides early warning signals and unique insights into events that are likely to occur. Furthermore, it can also help in assessing alternative suppliers and approaches. This prepares companies to handle unforeseen contingencies better.

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Competitive advantage

Competitive advantage often comes to companies who are more agile, nimbler, and react faster when compared to their peers in the market.  In fact, a quick reaction to unforeseen disruptions is the route for modern companies to gain a competitive advantage. For instance, if a particular supplier is struggling to meet the company’s demand, they can quickly move to an alternative. Or, if a key component may be difficult to procure, companies can lock up the supply before the competitor does. Market intelligence via real-time alerts is key to achieve this as it gives faster insights for companies to be prepared for contingencies in the future.

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Frozen Food Market

Supply Market Intelligence Helps a Leading Frozen Food Manufacturer to Identify and Assess Factors Affecting Market Volatility – A Food Industry Engagement

Engagement Overview:

The client, a pioneer in the frozen food market wanted to identify and assess factors affecting market volatility. The client wanted to study the market forces and implement a comparative analysis of the major players in the frozen food market. Hence they approached SpendEdge to help them leverage its strong expertise in supply market intelligence. Also, the client wanted to address challenges arising due to their inability to study the supply market.

About the Client:

One of the world’s largest frozen food company that manufactures and supplies frozen food products to regions across the globe.request proposal

Business Challenge:

The increasing uncertainty in the global frozen food market is the compelling factor that is forcing frozen food companies to closely monitors market fluctuations and adopt precise supply chain strategies to prevent supply chain disruptions. As leading frozen food companies devise precise procurement strategies that enhance profit margins, they are increasingly discovering major shortfalls in market intelligence and other such capabilities that form the basis for devising effective procurement strategies.

The frozen food market client was facing similar challenges, which compelled them to leverage supply market intelligence to make precise decisions related to business functions, profit objectives, budgets, and pricing strategies.

How did SpendEdge Help the Client?

The supply market intelligence experts at SpendEdge joined hands with the frozen food market client to address market fluctuations and develop deep market intelligence aimed at offering insights into core factors affecting the supply market including- market trends, regulatory changes, commodity pricing, and factors impacting global sourcing.

Our experts developed a comprehensive approach that responds to the long-term market trends while supporting their corporate strategies. The development process was split into the following three phases:

  • Step 1: Development of a commodity profilerequest proposal

This step is a pre-requisite for analyzing the supply market to gain a better understanding of the supply market scenario. By doing so players in the frozen food market segment will be able to gain clearer insights on the products being examined along with the scope of the engagement.

Our supply market intelligence experts began with a detailed analysis of supply market data to better understand the market scenario and develop a commodity profile. This involved extensive interviews with market leaders to analyze their business models. This enabled the frozen food market client to identify and classify all the potential suppliers that are capable of meeting their requirements.

  • Step 2: Evaluation of market leaders and their procurement strategies

An external review of the supply market enabled the frozen food market client to identify major players in the segment. A detailed supply market review helped them uncover procurement best practices and other procurement strategies adopted by market leaders. This enabled the client to compare their procurement strategies with that of the industry’s best and make necessary changes to existing strategies.

  • Step 3: A strategic three-step supply market intelligence-based approach to identify market trends and industry forces

The strategic three-step supply market intelligence approach offered detailed insights into supply and demand fluctuations in the frozen food market. Such an approach enabled the client to effectively manage the dynamism of the value chain by minimizing the time dedicated to information gathering and analysis.

Key questions answered in this supply market intelligence engagement include:

Frozen Food Market

Request Demo

Benefits of the Engagement:

With the help of SpendEdge’s supply market intelligence solutions, the frozen food market client was able to analyze the global supply market scenario and make holistic and unbiased business decisions. The fact that they leveraged supply market intelligence throughout their procurement functions turned out to be a top differentiator in the company’s performance.

Importance of supply market intelligence in the frozen food market

It is a well-known fact that intelligence can only be gleaned from relevant timely information on market developments and fluctuations. Without which the massive data influx can result in major challenges for players in the frozen food market, given the enormous amounts of data available today. The generic nature of data makes it necessary for procurement officials to weed out outdated and irrelevant data to obtain the required information.

Since business operations are severely affected by market volatility, it is essential for frozen food companies to leverage intelligence in decision making. Moreover, the need for real-time market information on indirect spend categories and market dynamics is what is compelling leading frozen food companies to devise appropriate strategies to gain a competitive edge. To sustain a competitive advantage by doing so leading frozen food market players are now approaching SpendEdge to leverage its procurement expertise to thrive in a complicated market.

Our Findings:

This supply market intelligence engagement helps to visualize the importance of leveraging intelligence in procurement decision making. Also, the strategic use of supply market intelligence paves the way for organizations to confront the accelerating procurement challenges.

 If your organization is on the lookout for an objective way to reduce procurement related costs, we’re here to help. Wait no more! Go ahead and get in touch with our strategic sourcing experts to develop custom configured engagement models and procurement research deliverables.

Contact US

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Market Intelligence

Leveraging Supply Market Intelligence to Develop a Future Proofed Sustainability Strategy for a Break Bulk Cargo Shipping Company

Engagement Overview:

The client, a pioneer in offering break bulk cargo shipping services, wanted to offer its customer a value proposition on sustainability that could not be matched by their peers operating in the logistics industry. To do so, the client was focusing on achieving breakthrough value by leveraging supply market intelligence.

To identify and focus on the development of a sustainability strategy, the logistics industry client approached SpendEdge to help them leverage it’s strong expertise in market intelligence to address challenges arising due to their inability to study the supply market. This engagement entailed the use of a detailed quantitative analysis of various categories within the supply chain to develop and future-proof the best strategy.

About the Client:request proposal

One of the world’s largest cargo shipping company, offering break bulk cargo shipping services.

Business Challenge:

The logistics industry is a volatile one due to which new challenges emerge every year. Confronting such immense transformations pose several challenges for players in this industry. Such market disruptions have different implications for individual organizations based on the segment in which they operate.

This engagement deals with the challenges faced by the client operating in the break bulk cargo shipping segment. The ongoing market trends and developments were adversely affecting the client’s growth as a result of which they wanted to devise a strategy to ensure continued profitability.

Moreover, the dynamic nature of the logistics industry along with the changing customer demands posed several new challenges, which accelerated the need for leveraging market intelligence in devising sustainable supply chain strategies. Therefore, to overcome such challenges and devise a best-in-class sourcing strategy, the break bulk cargo shipping services provider wanted to leverage market intelligence across their global supply network.

How did SpendEdge Help the Client?

Our supply market intelligence experts collaborated with the break bulk cargo services client to develop a comprehensive sustainability approach that responds to the long-term market trends while supporting their corporate strategies. The development process can be categorized into the following three phases:

  • Step 1: Internal analysis of the supply market

The initial step revolved around the analysis of supply market data to better understand the market scenario. This involved extensive interviews with market leaders to analyze their business objectives and the business models adopted by them. By doing so, the client was able to classify their strengths and weaknesses and identify key drivers for sustainable performance.request proposal

  • Step 2: External review to better understand the dynamism in the supply market

Conducting an external review of the market is a pre-requisite to any supply market intelligence assessment. A detailed market review helped the break bulk cargo client to gain a clear understanding of the factors affecting market growth. Also, with the help of such detailed market inputs, the client was able to comprehend the near-term changes in the business environment.

  • Step 3: A strategic three-step supply market intelligence-based approach to develop a sustainable strategy to drive business growth

The developed approach helped raise the bar for sustainability in the industry. The scrupulous three-step approach also enabled the break bulk cargo shipping company to effectively implement sustainability practices in their business operations. It also allowed the client to fine-tune their procurement strategies to meet future goals and objectives. This, in turn, led to an increase in profit margins, enhancements in market share, and improvements in ROI.

Key questions answered in this supply market intelligence engagement include:

Market Intelligence

Request Demo

Benefits of the Engagement:

With the help of SpendEdge’s supply market intelligence solution, the break bulk cargo shipping services provider develop a comprehensive direction for sustainability which helped them reap positive results. The developed approach turned out to be a top differentiator in the company’s performance. Our experts worked as an extension of the break bulk cargo firm to identify the success factors that uncovered several future sustainability opportunities within the logistics industry.

Why is supply market intelligence important for logistics industry players?

As digitization takes the forefront and customer expectation evolve, the logistics industry is expected to face unprecedented challenges. Collaborative business models and advanced sourcing strategies are constantly re-shaping the market landscape in ways that are only beginning to become ostensible. New market entrants in the form of start-ups and market expansions by existing players are also shaking up the global market.

‘Market Intelligence’ is, therefore, the need of the hour, making it essential for logistics industry players to possess the right intelligence at the right time. Hence, leading companies are now approaching SpendEdge to leverage its expertise in supply market intelligence and flourish in a hyper-competitive environment.

Our Findings:

This supply market intelligence engagement points out the fact that market intelligence is an essential success factor, which empowers organizations to keep abreast of the ongoing market disruptions to achieve long-term strategic business goals. Also, the strategic use of market intelligence paves the way for organizations to confront the ever-increasing procurement challenges.

Besides, it is quite evident from this engagement that effective use of market intelligence will eventually help you achieve the set goals. If your organization is on the lookout for an objective way to drive sustainability, we’re here to help. Wait no more! Go ahead and get in touch with our supply market intelligence experts to develop custom configured engagement models and procurement research deliverables.

Contact US

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car manufacturers

Promoting Luxury Cars Sales Through Supply Market Intelligence: An Automotive Industry Case Study by SpendEdge

Engagement Overview:

The client, a pioneer in the luxury cars segment in the southern United States, was seeking detailed insights into the automotive industry’s supply market scenario. The luxury cars client was looking at leveraging supply market intelligence to promote sales and gain a competitive edge. To identify and focus on key strategies that drive sales, the automotive industry player approached SpendEdge to help them leverage its strong expertise in supply market intelligence to address the challenges in their supply network.request proposal

The supply market intelligence engagement entailed the use of a detailed quantitative analysis of various categories within the supply chain to identify and benchmark the best strategies to be adopted.

About the Client:

A multinational automotive industry firm specializing in the manufacturing and sales of high-end luxury cars.

Business Challenge:

The complicated nature of the automotive industry was compelling the luxury cars manufacturer to enhance their strategies to drive sales. Also, factors such as market dynamism and the ongoing industrial transformations posed several new challenges, which accelerated the need for a major transformation in their overall supply chain strategies.request proposal

To overcome such challenges and achieve multifunctional synergies across their global supply network, the luxury cars client wanted to leverage supply market intelligence.

How did SpendEdge Help the Client?

  • Step 1: Scrutinizing relevant supply market data

The initial step revolved around the collection and analysis of supply market data to develop precise procurement strategies. This step included a detailed analysis of all the essential supply chain principles and elements required to build an efficient supply chain strategy which, in turn, enhanced their organizational performance to boost profitability.

  • Step 2: Understanding the structure of the global market

A pre-requisite to any supply market intelligence assessment is to have a clear understanding of the commodity and its global market landscape. This helps businesses identify factors affecting their market growth. Detailed insights into the global supply market scenario also enabled the luxury cars client to identify the key market players and classify them based on their market size.

  • Step 3: A tactical three-step supply market intelligence-based approach to drive business growth

The strategic approach helped the luxury cars manufacturer to devise effective strategies to enhance brand value, market presence, supply chain efficiency, and drive sales across their business units. It also enabled the client to analyze their business objectives, devise a commodity profile, examine cost structures, increase ROI, and improve market shares.

Request Demo

Key questions answered in this supply market intelligence engagement include:

luxury cars

Benefits of the Engagement:

The supply market intelligence solutions offered by our experts helped the luxury cars client to fine-tune their supply chain strategies to drive maximum sales. Our experts worked as an extension of the automotive firm to identify the success factors that uncovered major growth opportunities within the automotive industry.

Why is Supply Market Intelligence the ‘Need of the Hour’?

It is essential to possess the right ‘market intelligence’ at the right time even if the process deals with procurement related decision making. Access to timely and precise supply market intelligence offers a huge strategic advantage for businesses across industries. However, not having access to accurate supply market intelligence makes firms vulnerable to supply chain risks.

The growing competitive pressure in today’s automotive industry poses major challenges for players in terms tackling supply chain risks. This demands the need for developing a strong and efficient supply network, which will help improve organizational performance. To do so, and to achieve their long-term procurement goals, organizations are now approaching SpendEdge to leverage its expertise in supply market intelligence and to succeed in a hyper-competitive environment.

Our Findings:

This engagement points out to the fact that supply market intelligence is an essential success factor, which enables an organization to achieve strategic business goals. The strategic use of market intelligence paves way for enterprises to tackle the ever-increasing procurement challenges.

Just like our luxury cars client, if your organization is also on the lookout for an objective way to drive sales, SpendEdge’s supply market intelligence solutions will help you do so by being your roadmap to success. So, wait no more! Go ahead and get in touch with our automotive industry experts to build the capability required to gain a competitive advantage.

To know more about our supply market intelligence solutions for automotive industry players

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Manufacturing Sector

Category Market Intelligence for the Manufacturing Sector – A SpendEdge Case Study

Engagement Overview:

A leading player in the manufacturing sector wanted to build a category management strategy for boosting their procurement functions. The client also wanted to enhance their category expertise and intelligence across all critical areas of the supply network. To do so, the manufacturing sector client approached SpendEdge to leverage a category market intelligence solution. A detailed quantitative analysis of various supply chain categories was carried out to build world-class procurement solutions.

About the Client:

The client is a leading player in the manufacturing sector, specializing in the manufacturing of automotive components.request proposal

Business Challenge:

The manufacturing sector client was facing several challenges in making optimal procurement decisions, which varied from broad macro data on price trends to highly granular supplier specific information.

How did SpendEdge Help the Client?

  • Step 1: Build a robust intelligence unit for managing frequently sourced categories

The first step revolved around the development of an internal intelligence unit for managing the frequently sourced categories. The development of this capability required investments in category intelligence tools that focus exclusively on a specific supply market. Leading players in the manufacturing sector have already made such investments, but in today’s scenario, there’s a larger scope for enhancing this capability by building an information infrastructure for capturing and sharing data across the organization’s supply network.

  • Step 2: Customized procurement and category market intelligence strategies

Supply market intelligence is essential to manage the dynamics of the global supply network. Customization of procurement and category management strategies can help reduce the time allocated for information gathering and enable manufacturing companies to focus on strategic sourcing.

  • Step 3: Built a robust category market intelligence framework

To devise an effective intelligence framework, it is essential to differentiate frequently sourced categories from the infrequently sourced categories. The developed framework enhanced value through a basic process that captured category data based on sourcing activities. It also enabled the client to populate simple supplier information and rate databases with information about both supplier capabilities and past performance, as well as a price and rate information.

Key questions answered in this category market intelligence engagement include:

Manufacturing Sector

Benefits of the Engagement:

The category market intelligence experts at SpendEdge helped the manufacturing sector client to enhance their procurement efficiency by devising an effective category management strategy. Category market intelligence also enabled the client to gain detailed insights into the different categories within the supply network.

Why incorporate category market intelligence in the manufacturing sector?

Excelling in category management is an important goal of procurement organizations globally. New imperatives have emerged out of complex market landscapes besides cost savings; thereby, compelling manufacturing companies to view the role of procurement through the prism of innovation, risk, flexibility, cost, and speed.

SpendEdge’s category market intelligence solutions are aimed at offering personalized category management solutions to procurement teams to help them cut down the time allocated for information collection and analysis. Implementing our category market intelligence solutions helps procurement professionals to focus on category management and drive organizational value. This helps them to emphasize on adding value to procurement rather than cutting procurement costs.

Our Findings:

The role of intelligence in procurement as a strategic enabler of business success is now bigger than ever. Effective category management helps manufacturing sector firms to develop a leading category market intelligence capability, which proves to be challenging even for the most resourceful organizations. Therefore, it is essential for businesses to develop a strong foundation in category management as it helps deliver breakthrough value and elevates the role of procurement by helping them gain access to the organizational spend data.

To know more about our category market intelligence solutions

request proposal

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supply market intelligence

Is Supply Market Intelligence Relevant in Procurement: All You Need to Know

Procurement is slowly gaining traction and increased strategic importance within companies. This has raised the bar of expectation from procurement professionals to do much more within a limited time frame. This is where the role of supply market intelligence comes into the picture. To make the best decisions possible without falling behind, procurement professionals must ensure that they have access to and effectively use supply market intelligence. But before we get into further details of how supply markeRequest Demo_SEt intelligence is relevant in procurement, let’s get into some basics:

What is supply market intelligence?

Market intelligence consists of three pillars. The first is market research, which principally involves data — how to get it, provide access to it, store and analyze it, and the many methods and applications for doing so. The second pillar is competitive intelligence, which consists of obtaining information such as competitive dynamics, disruptors and other value levers at play for strategic purposes.  Lastly, the third key pillar is the process of gathering and analyzing data and information relevant to a company’s supply markets. All three ultimately support the goal of enabling accurate and confident decision-making in the procurement process. Therefore, from a procurement perspective, market intelligence is often referred to as supply market intelligence (SMI).

Importance of supply market intelligence to organizations

Collecting large amounts of data such as the cost, price, additional benchmarks, KPIs, best-fit suppliers, and negotiation levers, among others — to inform a sourcing process is a difficult task. But factors such as the rapidly increasing number of sources and a limited amount of time and resources (shrinking teams, shared services approaches) for organizations to deal with just makes things even more difficult. This is the reason most organizations are pushed into seeking out market intelligence. Market intelligence is necessary to help tackle any aspect of most of these challenges. An organization will be able to alleviate a considerable amount of its business challenges by gathering data on supply market capabilities, getting a good read on how the competition is developing, managing their supply base and supply chain, and understanding key trends driving or otherwise affecting the market — ultimately utilizing these for strategic purposes. By leveraging external signals and data to refine and enhance product plans internally, identify competitive opportunities, and map the execution of better sourcing strategies to support overall business requirements, businesses can leverage buying power and compete effectively.

How relevant is supply market intelligence?

Several procurement practitioners and their organizations are making conscious investment efforts in supply market intelligence planning and capabilities — especially with help from third parties. As more number of players are slowly recognizing the importance of supply market intelligence, they are dedicating an increased number of workforce to build on this capability. Today, improving analytical, procurement, modeling, and reporting capabilities to support market intelligence initiatives has become a higher priority than capabilities that had previously been emphasized. Ultimately, the degree to which market intelligence is built upon data and analysis, enabled by various parts of the organization, and deployed for different purpose-driven ends ultimately speaks about how relevant it is, and will continue to be, for procurement teams.

To know more about how supply market intelligence can help enhance procurement in organizations

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market intelligence

Category Intelligence to Improve Market Presence by Assessing Competitors’ Category Strategies – A SpendEdge Case Study for a Retail Company

Engagement Overview:

The fashion retail client wanted to develop and execute category market intelligence strategies in a sustainable way. To assess their competitors’ category strategies and improve their market presence, the fashion retail firm approached SpendEdge to devise a comprehensive approach to category management and implement those solutions throughout their global supply chains.

A detailed quantitative analysis of various categories within the supply chain was carried out identify, assess, and benchmark the best practices to be followed. Also, the constant monitoring of variables that could possibly impact the strategy led to the development of a precise category plan. The variable included – consolidation within the sector, entry of new players, technological request proposal developments, and macroeconomic changes.

About the Client:

A multinational retail company specializing in fashion retail. The client is a leading player in the retail industry with several well-established subsidiaries operating in over 20 developed economies.

Business Challenge:

The fashion retail client was facing difficulties in developing a market intelligence based category plan.

How did SpendEdge Help the Client?

  • Step 1: Developed a three-step methodology

Our category market intelligence experts followed a structured approach to develop a precise category plan.

  • Step 2: Benchmarking of peers and incumbent suppliers

Identified potential saving opportunities across 10 categories and by providing benchmark pricing, we helped them ensure that the quoted price is in line with the average market price.

  • Step 3: Identified new category trends and reported best-in-class performance metrics

Identified new category trends and niche supplier segments – identifying market trends well in advance helped the client to plan for the future.

Benefits of the Engagement:

Our category market intelligence solution helped the fashion retail firm to monitor all the developments across the organizations’ direct and indirect procurement categories. Our team worked as an extension of the client’s business to filter out irrelevant information and extract precise content to deliver actionable insights to category managers in the form of industry reports, periodic newsletters, and annual updates among others.

Why incorporate category intelligence solutions?

Growing technological advancements and a rise in globalization have resulted in the rapid evolution of business models and procurement categories across industries. This has made it necessary for category managers to leverage category market intelligence and adopt a pro-active approach to category planning. Category market intelligence based solutions help companies to leverage demand across the enterprise to achieve maximum savings.

Key questions answered in this category market intelligence study include:

market intelligenceOur Findings:

To devise a precise category plan, category managers require access to comprehensive and timely insights. It also requires appropriate updates on category developments to spot early warning signals and curtail supply chain disruptions.

Though leading players in the retail industry have recognized the importance of having category strategies and market intelligence mechanisms, they seem to limit their efforts to direct procurement categories. It is important to note that indirect procurement categories such as – finance, HR, IT, and logistics can also cause significant liabilities for clients though they do not constitute a significant part of their spend.

To know more about our category market intelligence engagement

request proposal

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