Hold on to your clipboard, your calculator and your PC: You can expect more pressure from the big cheeses to streamline procurement services even more than they are now, in light of today’s economic pressures.

This week’s buzzword, according to procurement experts: spend analysis.

It’s a fancy term for going back to basics on ground-level procurement functions, notes a recent AberdeenGroup report on the subject.

It’s likely you’ll be asked to contribute to the big picture by taking a closer look at the detail work.

Why is this happening?

CEOs and CFOs are getting the word that there’s gold in them thar hills (your procurement operation). And in this day and age, when execs are turning over every stone looking for those shiny nuggets, you certainly can expect them to come digging around in your backyard.

Here are a few steps to take, in order to get a jump on this:

• Make sure you have (or have gathered) key stats about all of your suppliers. This includes the correct name of the company, the name of its parent company, the credit rating, the approximate cost of annual transactions, and its SIC (Standard Industry Code).
• Audit your own records to better organize products and suppliers. Many companies end up assigning different codes to suppliers or products. For example, one set of records might be devoted to HP; another to Hewlett-Packard — when they’re both the same vendor.
• Differentiate divisions within suppliers. You might be dealing with a small subsidiary of a larger company — but your records end up with files for both. Make sure there’s a way to visibly establish these links.
• Pull together your data. It’s not unusual for procurement data to accumulate in different databases, as individual transactions trickle in one direction or another. Come up with a system for reconciling these situations, so everyone has the visibility they require.

By better organizing your company’s spending habits, you’ll be able to consolidate orders, ensure you’re buying at the lowest prices, and be able to provide rapid and accurate answers when the bosses show up on your doorstep.

Tags: CEOs, CFOs, procurement, SIC, suppliers, vendor