Tropic’s Post

How to simplify procurement planning in 4 steps to develop an initial process within 100 days 👇 1️⃣ Baseline your spend: Organize suppliers and contracts in one place to improve visibility 2️⃣ Build a brand: Develop relationships with internal and external stakeholders to reduce “procurement bypass” and get buy-in   3️⃣ Get points on the board: Leverage data and insights to start sourcing and negotiating 4️⃣ Get early-buy-in: Implement a simple purchasing policy for stakeholders to follow By day 100, #Finance and #Procurement teams now have better visibility, a pipeline of opportunities, a V1 design of processes, and an early network of supporters. Take a page out of Michael Shields' book and learn how to build a strong foundation and scalable procurement process in our latest blog: https://lnkd.in/ggwhu8Jf

We're honored to be recognized as a G2 grid leader in SaaS spend management, strategic sourcing, and purchasing! 🌴 Our customers are continuing to find value – using Tropic to proactively manage their spend and identify ways to gain leverage, drive savings, and increase procurement efficiencies. 💪 #spendmanagement #procurement #SaaS

How to increase visibility to manage spend more effectively ⤵ After all, you can't manage what you can't see. Without visibility, effective #spendmanagement is hard to achieve as these aspects below become very difficult to do: ⚙ Improving control 🛠 Optimizing efficiency 💰 Driving cost savings You’d be surprised at how many companies lack proper visibility into their spend. To get on the right track, #finance and #procurement teams can lay a strong foundation and increase visibility through these 8 steps 👇

Here's a common dilemma (and how to fix it): Procurement achieves strong results for the organization, but the CFO is still disappointed. According to Chandhrika Venkataraman and Michael Shields, you can mitigate that disappointment by leveraging spend data to set proper expectations up front. That's your key to gaining stakeholder alignment. Keep your #CFO happy by 👇 1️⃣ Using spend data to communicate realistic goals (even provide an updated forecast) 2️⃣ Using spend data to present potential options and outcomes (then let your stakeholder decide which path to proceed) Learn how to do all this in our latest blog: https://lnkd.in/gYd3wgkh

#Finance and #Procurement teams overlook one important area when trying to increase internal adoption of their purchasing process: User Experience 👆 According to Michael Shields, that should always be your starting point when looking to drive adoption. After all, no one likes a bad buying or checkout experience. 🛒 Use these 5 guiding questions to improve the user experience of your purchasing process and increase stakeholder adoption 👇

During implementation, 80% of our customers find out they’ve had a #SaaS contract auto-renew without their knowledge. 🤦♂️ Your key to avoid this? Visibility into upcoming contracts and critical dates, which is what a renewal calendar with automatic alerts can give you. Having one also means you have the time to proactively: 📊 Dig into usage data 🤝 Negotiate better deals 🔎 Source more strategically No more digging through emails, chasing down contract owners, or relying on memory. Learn how a renewal calendar is your ticket to manage #spend more effectively: https://lnkd.in/ghPdVVnJ

How do you determine who gets a license…and who doesn’t? Too often companies make the mistake of cutting license count based on little data and collaboration. Here’s a better way Michael Shields approached this situation for a past renewal, where usage had ballooned by over 120% 👇 1️⃣ He partnered with IT and the supplier to collect data, looking at how often the company used XYZ tool. 2️⃣ Together, they also explored alternative solutions already available in their existing tech stack. 3️⃣ They defined an acceptable ROI of using XYZ tool. 4️⃣ They separated users into 2 groups: Those who achieved the acceptable ROI and those who didn’t. 5️⃣ They sent emails to these 2 groups. For those who met the criteria for XYZ tool, they told them they could keep their license but still offered the opportunity to voluntarily it up give up (by using an alternative). The email included a video on how to use the alternatives. For those in the other camp, they told them they would be removing their license but allowed them the opportunity to appeal by providing additional data and context they may not have considered. The result? Licenses (and potential costs) were cut in half. 💡 In the process, Michael gave up his license but found that one of the alternative solutions actually met his needs better. Without this simple exercise, he had no idea the other solution was even an option. #procurement #spendmanagement #saas