Actionable Spend Analysis Through Applied Data Science

Today Buyers Meeting Point welcomes two guests: Brian Seipel and James Patounas, both from Source One. Source One recently announced the launch of Spend Consultant, a Spend Analysis as a Service web platform, and Brian and James each played a key role in its development.

Brian Seipel is one of Source One’s Strategic Sourcing Analysts, focused on helping companies implement innovative solutions to drive revenue and expand market share through procurement and strategic sourcing best practices.  His combined a background in Business Analysis, Information Technology, and Marketing allowed him to play an instrumental role in developing the proprietary spend classification taxonomy and user experience for Spend Consultant.

James Patounas is Source One's Senior Data Scientist. His background has focused heavily on the practical application of data mining, acquisition, normalization, and visualization to facilitate procurement and strategic sourcing. He is the team lead and primary architect of Spend Consultant.

In this conversation we discuss:

• How the 'scientific method' can be applied to spend anaytics with the help of data science
• Why procurement must strive to resist the effects of 'analysis paralysis' or the trap of conducting analysis for its own sake
• The importance of using a taxonomy that matches the procurement perspective (acquisition) rather than relying upon a standard (NAICS, UNSPSC, SIC) that while widely recognized, was developed for production purposes.