A Look at Sourcing Optimization vs Excel

Procurement teams must constantly adapt to new challenges and changing market conditions. But the current approaches of using spreadsheets and old cumbersome tools are not allowing teams to be agile to keep up with market demands.

That's where strategic esourcing solutions like Keelvar's comes in, offering a more dynamic and efficient way to manage sourcing processes. Our Sourcing Optimizer allows for the construction of a new price schedule to replace historical Excel spreadsheets.

Let's dive into the six reasons why Keelvar's sourcing optimization is a better solution for your business than Excel:

1. Dynamic 'traffic light' pricing feedback

Firstly, Keelvar's sourcing optimization technology offers dynamic 'traffic light' pricing feedback, allowing suppliers to receive real-time feedback on where their bid ranks in comparison to their competitors. This encourages suppliers to make their offers more competitive, which results in better pricing for buyers. On the other hand, Excel has limited visibility, making it challenging to drive competitive pricing.

2. Instant scenario analysis

Secondly, our Optimizer platform enables procurement professionals to model award scenarios in seconds with more data and at a greater scale. This unlocks bundle pricing and package offers, which helps buyers optimize their outcomes. In contrast, Excel is limited in its ability to perform complex scenario analysis, making it difficult for procurement professionals to make informed decisions.

3. Faster event set up

Launching RFPs in Excel can be a time-consuming process, involving manual data entry and configuration. In contrast, sourcing optimization technology like Keelvar's allows teamsto upload bid sheets and let AI take care of the configuration, enabling faster event set up in just minutes.

4. Faster cycle times

Excel-based procurement processes are prone to errors and can be slow, particularly when it comes to manual tasks like bid invites and validation of supplier data. Sourcing optimization technology like Keelvar's automates 90% of these manual tasks, reducing time to award to just weeks.

5. Self-service buying

Sourcing optimization enables business teams to source like experts for lower value spend, with automated workflows that follow best practices. This frees up procurement professionals to focus on more strategic activities, while still ensuring compliance and good governance.

6. More supplier value and buyer visibility

Keelvar's technology enables buyers to capture more non-cost line items and get a complete view of supplier strengths, sustainability attributes, and innovations. This results in better procurement outcomes and stronger supplier relationships.

Sourcing optimization also enables sourcing teams to share winning scenario reports with stakeholders and key decision makers, giving them the best award scenario based on cost, value, and risk.

‍

In summary, sourcing optimization technology offers procurement professionals a more dynamic, efficient, and effective way to manage your sourcing processes. Keelvar can find cost savings for clients by gathering enhanced bid data from suppliers.

By using Keelvar’s unique product it is possible to reason about conditional offers to compute the most economically advantageous outcome. Suppliers often have opportunities for realizing cost savings when they can work with buyers, but in large scale tendering these possibilities are lost without a more sophisticated software driven approach to reason about cost efficiencies.

Thus, our innovative Sourcing Optimization software is central to our service delivery, complementing existing e-procurement solutions.

Keelvar’s approach is very much grounded in offering a solution that can increase competition while ensuring that the outcome is one that winning suppliers are comfortable with. Get in touch for a look at how our offering works today.