VIRTUAL SUPPLY CHAIN INNOVATION LAB (VSCL) : PREPARING FOR STRATEGIC PROCUREMENT
Introduction
The Virtual Supply Chain Innovation Lab is an educational initiative designed to give students hands-on experience with modern procurement technologies. This lab provides a practical environment for students to engage with real-world tools used in procurement, from project management to spend analysis and strategic sourcing.
Before companies make any major changes, it’s crucial to prepare and manage projects properly, which is where Focal Point plays a key role in laying the strategic groundwork. However, understanding current financial standing is vital, and Spendata is used to analyze overall spend, offering insights into suppliers and expenditures to support informed decisions. After analyzing spend data, students select two categories—such as cafeteria services, cleaning, or construction—requiring critical thinking to justify their choice. Once the categories are chosen, Category Management begins, involving a thorough evaluation of suppliers, cost factors, and opportunities for innovation to optimize spending and deliver value to internal customers.
Focal Point: Centralized Procurement Management
Overview: Focal Point is valuable in procurement management as it breaks down data silos and integrates processes into a unified platform, providing full visibility across all procurement activities. It provides students a more realistic view of an active CPO Dashboard.
Focus Area for Students: Understand tool features, illustrate how this kind of tools bring value to CPOs, procurement offices and the organization as a whole and conduct a market assessment. Also, once you will be provided access to the tool, you will use it, not only to understand the features and explain them to the class/professor, but also you have to set up a project, by creating dynamic dashboards.
Spendata – Spend Analytics
Overview: Spendata is a comprehensive spend analysis tool that helps organizations understand their spending patterns and uncover cost-saving opportunities. It allows users to categorize, cleanse, and analyze procurement data from multiple sources.
Focus Area for Students: Students should develop a good understanding of Spendata’s features and analytical capabilities, its value proposition, market assessment and be able to illustrate this in their presentation. Once, you will be given access to the tool, you will upload an excel file containing Northeastern 2022 spend data, which will be provided to you, and interact with the tool using that data. Students will then select categories of spend from the Commodity cube that they believe are best suited for implementing cost-saving strategies. You’ll need to apply critical thinking and analytical
skills to justify why you chose that category. What is the logic behind your decision? Why did you select that specific area for improvement? The research paper should include an analysis of these dashboards, explaining how they were constructed and what insights they reveal.
Category Management
Overview: Category management is a procurement strategy that aligns purchasing decisions with organizational goals. It involves managing categories of products or services, optimizing supplier relationships, and reducing costs while mitigating risks.
Focus Area for Students: Explain what is category management, conduct market analysis on the categories you chose, and select supplier/s based on comprehensive criteria, like quality, cost, innovation, and risk. begins with a thorough analysis of all elements, including current suppliers, cost factors, and potential innovative or low-risk suppliers. The goal is to drive innovation, consolidate spending, and deliver the best value based on customer needs and organizational priorities.
Key questions include: Who are the current and best suppliers? Are there more innovative or low-risk options? What are the cost elements, and how can you optimize spending and aggregate it to best serve internal customers?
