For a goal-driven procurement function, data is everything. Procurement professionals mine data from their tools and systems and run several analyses to analyze spending, create benchmarks for suppliers, and formulate a sourcing strategy that is in tandem with their business objectives. But how does the procurement function aggregate, manage, and process the required data to make informed decisions?
The answer lies in Microsoft Excel.
Commonly known as Excel, it is the go-to option for procurement functions across businesses to create worksheets, receive responses, analyse data and make decisions. No doubt, Excel is the preferred choice for procurement professionals and its advocates list the following reasons for its popularity.
- User-friendliness: Even first-time users do not have to trace a steep learning curve.
- Availability: With Microsoft products being omnipotent in every organization, it is easier to access Excel.
- Ease of creating formulas: Complex formulas can be built for data analysis easily.
Limitations of Excel
Though the above-mentioned salient features of Excel make it the universal choice for calculations, it fails to meet the user expectations on the following parameters:
Users devoid of guidance and data arsenal
When procurement professionals need historic data to make informed decisions, they have to recollect how the past transactions were done and accordingly locate the appropriate Excel sheet. Excel does not guide them or present them with the required or appropriate data points. Thus, no wonder that mining the right data is an arduous task and businesses need to rely on the expertise of a certain person. In the absence of such a person, the decision-making process may lose its effectiveness.
Collaboration? That is still an abstract idea if you are an Excel acolyte
Let us imagine a situation in which several stakeholders have to collectively decide contract terms or parameters for acquiring goods or services. Excel does not facilitate real-time collaboration. All users need access to the original worksheet and they work in siloes.
Unscalable and not repeatable
Procurement professionals have to build worksheets from scratch if their organization wants to acquire a new product or create a new product category. Such work from ground zero is cumbersome and may lead to unintelligent decisions due to a lack of adequate historic data.
Knowledge transfer: another pain
A business hires a new person to manage the procurement process and the tool to make decisions is Excel. Will it be easy for the new person to discover all the required information about past transactions and scheduled ones on his own? The answer is no. Excel does not guide users with past transactional data. Thus, knowledge transfer becomes critical in order to hand over the duties to the new joiner. Again, the new hire requires a significant amount of time to learn the ropes and set plans in motion. In other words, Excel is more of a hindrance if your business is planning to employ someone new to continue the execution of the procurement-related tasks.
Not API- friendly
A procurement professional wants to fetch data from an existing Excel spreadsheet and feed that into the business intelligence system. To some readers, it may not look like an intricate task, but in reality, it is. Fetching data from Excel spreadsheets and feeding it to the business intelligence systems requires integration. In other words, Excel must be integrable with that business intelligence system. If not, then the procurement professional would have to manually enter the data into the business intelligence system. It is neither an intelligent nor an efficient practice to manually enter the data. But users are forced to make manual entries and this problem is existent while companies aim to leverage technologies such as cloud, SaaS etc. The root cause of this problem is the unfriendliness of Excel with APIs. Though procurement professionals can create and maintain an ‘n’ number of Excel spreadsheets for different purposes, the data will be siloed and can not be easily consolidated and leveraged.
Too much irrelevant data and chaos
Excel empowers users with tools and functionalities to enter and manage the data the way they want. However, this degree of liberty paves the way to unwanted data. When several stakeholders collaborate using Excel worksheets, everyone may exercise all privileges as a user to arrange the data the way he or she wants. This liberty leads to chaos and data cleanliness becomes imperative.
Now, we have a clear knowledge of the limitations and shortcomings of using Excel in building worksheets. There is a lack of tools to develop and retain business intelligence, API unfriendliness, no means to facilitate collaboration among users, and extreme liberty for data management. This list clearly highlights the need for a better tool for building worksheets. A worksheet builder would help users to overcome the chronic problems faced on account of using an Excel worksheet. Let us discuss how the worksheet builder can be a solution to all problems discussed so far.
How can Smart Bid Sheet Builders help you overcome the limitations of Excel?
Intelligence Retention
We are aware of the fact that historic prices and trends can guide procurement professionals in making informed decisions. With tools that retain such information, users can visualize more scenarios after analyzing historic price patterns of goods and services. They can create worksheets that ask for and elaborate on all requirements. Again, with repeated use, users will leverage the treasure trove of information each time.
Ease of Collaboration
Gone will be the days when all stakeholders will be working in siloes and staring at decision paralysis on account of the slow relay of crucial information. Procurement professionals can quickly seek approvals, collectively analyze the information and make decisions. The collaboration tools are as efficient as WhatsApp which allows users to reply to a specific query, the users can collaborate in real-time, share information, and resolve any issues.
Knowledge retention
Usually, when an expert or a veteran leaves, businesses run into the problem of hiring the right replacement. Though before his or her exit, organizations strive to ensure knowledge transfer, they fall short of retaining the intelligence applied in making decisions. As the worksheet builder can retain and provide intelligence when necessary, the procurement functions do not have to make elaborate arrangements for knowledge transfer. The new user can take the reins of the veteran within a short span of time. This will also save organizations from hasty mis-hiring.
Leveraging the power of integrations
We know how Excel impels users to work in siloes, and make manual entries in other online and offline systems. API-friendly smart bid sheet builders can be a game changer for procurement professionals. They can easily fetch and feed the data to other systems. As a result, leveraging the power of other business intelligence systems will not be a challenge for procurement professionals.
Create, repeat, and repeat
As the smart bid sheet builder has a repository of business intelligence and templates for different products and categories, users can quickly build new worksheets. The outcome is more efficient worksheet building.
Zero nuisance of unclean data
With well-defined rules and fields for data entry and editing, the smart bid sheet builder can eliminate the nuisance of unclean data. Though the smart bid sheet builder will enable users to leverage all features and functionalities, the well-defined in-built restrictions will prevent the creation of unclean data.
Undoubtedly, the above-mentioned solutions to the chronic Excel problems sound essential for a business entity looking forward to tapping the power of data analytics and artificial intelligence. Such solutions will offer tangible as well as intangible benefits for the users. With the smart bid sheet builder in usage, businesses can have a center of excellence that has retained the intelligence and experience of their category managers. The users will be able to work towards delivering value rather than only repeatable and manual work. Procurement professionals will be able to ace negotiations as they can access intelligence captured by the smart bid sheet builder.
In this discussion, we detailed the limitations of Excel in building worksheets. We could not agree more that modern businesses with intricate procurement workflows need a tool that eliminates complexities, and bottlenecks, and empowers users with tools that enhance their process. Evidently, the advantages of using smart bid sheet builders outnumber the advantages of using Excel sheets by a huge margin. We can conclude that a smart bid sheet builder is imperative and not a fancy option to exercise.
