Turning AI Category Strategies into Action

Fundamentally, categories are groups of goods and services that customers buy. Many companies run sourcing events to get these items. These events deliver a lot of value, but a one-size-fits-all approach may result in some objectives being misaligned with category needs and category needs that aren’t addressed at all. Category management is a more strategic way to build alignment that optimizes outcomes and creates additional margin impact.

Category management is a nuanced approach that centers on spend categories to create additional margin impact.

Think for a moment about the categories of spend that exist in your company. Are some of them strategically relevant to the business – as in, will you face downtime and revenue loss if a delivery is missed? Or are some categories more transaction-based, where cost is the focus and processes could be more efficient?

This will guide you from pursuing the right category management strategies to securing these goods and services. Category management software can help you, for example, know when to talk to suppliers about setting up strategic partnerships or optimizing invoicing channels and catalog management to prevent bottlenecks.