Panel Discussion:Why You need a Data Analyst

Or

Why Data Geeks Rule

Panelists

• Bill Cooper– Associate Vice President & Chief Procurement Officer,

Stanford University• Sandy Hicks– Assistant Vice President & Chief Procurement Officer,

University of Colorado• John Riley– Executive Director of Purchasing and Business Services,

Arizona State University• Lisa Deal – Purchasing Director, University of Florida

Discussion Questions / Agenda

• Accessing data – what does it take?• What can a data analyst do?• Can a buyer do data analysis?• How do I create a data analyst position?• Data use success stories

Accessing Data

• Where do reports come from? IT? Finance? Vendor?• Total spend comes from lots of places

– Is PO data the same as AP data?– PCard– Direct bill– Travel

• Typical data:– Number of PO’s generated– Total $ of PO’s generated– Total spend

• By vendor• By accounting code

Spend Analytics ToolsData Warehouse

Savings OpportunityCycle timeMaverick spend/ Contract compliance

The data analyzed changes over time

Can a buyer analyze data?Panelists share experience

What can a data analyst do? Panelists share experience

– Evaluate other contracts for savings based on your institutions spend patterns

– Identify non standard pricing campus-wide• Departments paying different prices for same product

– Assist in solicitation formatting and response evaluation– Validate price increase requests and impact to campus

• CPI, PPI and other indices

– Analyze spend data to create “hot lists” – Use benchmark data to identify opportunity for

improved pricing

What can a data analyst do?

– Analyze invoice data for contract compliance– Provide Business Review data• Spend with vendor, spend by commodity, trends in

spend, funding sources, non contract spend

– Provide spend by vendor, commodity area, college/department

– Identify stakeholders– Track trends (PCard use, eProcurement adoption)

– Analyze requisition workload for buying staff

How do I create a data analyst position? Panelists share experience

• What is the title?• Where does it report?• How do I fund the position?

Savings success driven by data Panelists share experience

• Strategic Sourcing• Benchmark unit cost• Identify high cost items• Identify highly used items• Validate price per contract• Validate price increase (decrease)

Data Analysis Success StoriesPanelists share experience

Questions/Discussion

Thank you!