The spend cube becomes artificially intelligent!

Managing multiple suppliers within your organisation can be challenging. However, imagine having a clear overview of services performed across all locations. You know exactly who performs them and which agreements have been concluded. This is precisely the clarity and control our spend cube tool in Power BI can offer you, and it has now become even more efficient with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). In this article, you will be introduced to our spend cube and the benefits it can bring to your organisation.

Creating a structured overview of all your data might feel like climbing the Himalayas. It requires both time and energy to structure vast amounts of data, ranging from chart of accounts and creditor/debtor entries to location lists and contracts.

This is where our spend cube comes into play.

With it, you quickly gain detailed insight into your suppliers' deliverables and a granular cost overview down to the smallest detail; from department level right down to location and specialist area level.

Once you have organised your data, it creates a foundation for making well-informed decisions, ensuring efficient operations and financial savings. The data insights can serve as an effective management tool for achieving objectives across the organisation – when used and understood correctly.

At its core, our spend cube has one primary purpose: to provide you with a crystal-clear overview of your large volumes of data.

With it, we collect your data across systems and create a financial overview in a dashboard designed precisely to your specifications. Below, you can see the four specific steps in the development of the spend cube:

In addition to organising your data for clarity purposes, we add further value to your data by categorising your suppliers within areas such as facility management. And this particular aspect has now been made more efficient through the use of AI.

AI has become an element that enhances the value of the solution you receive with our spend cube.

When categorising suppliers, we apply AI across various areas, giving us access to far more sources and more accurate data. We have integrated a tool that can automatically look up relevant information for us in the analysis and categorisation of your suppliers. Subsequently, we quality assure the data to guarantee alignment with your company's needs.

Your financial savings are achieved, i.a., through improved supplier management, which a structured data foundation in the spend cube makes possible.

This is because a complete data overview provides you with some very clear advantages:

• You get a clear picture of which tasks are being performed and who performs them
• You can identify which suppliers are covered by a service agreement.
• You can choose to renegotiate contracts with existing suppliers or conduct market price tests on major services through tender.
• You gain increased opportunities for benchmarking and improved reporting capabilities.

Furthermore, it ensures that tasks don't fall between the cracks or get performed more times than necessary.

Moreover, it can serve as the starting point for developing a detailed asset list with associated operations and maintenance plan.

To gain maximum benefit and value from your data, it is crucial that the spend cube is broadly implemented across the organisation.

This means identifying stakeholders throughout the organisation and working with them to define important reporting needs and KPIs. It is, therefore, essential to agree on how your data should be used, especially as an active management tool.

The overview provided by the spend cube can, for example, be used for cost benchmarking to achieve cost savings or as a basis for optimising processes and building operations. It can also be used for improved procurement management and much more.

Our experience shows that when the spend cube is broadly implemented and actively used as a management tool, it significantly increases the chances of achieving your desired goals – whether it's about realising savings or achieving more efficient operations. Broad involvement also ensures that the underlying processes driving cost savings are effectively identified and measured.