SAS and Dun & Bradstreet expand collaboration

Defining an emerging area akin to supply chain management, data warehousing and decision support vendor SAS Institute, and business-to-business information provider Dun & Bradstreet have expanded a collaboration in Supplier Relationship Management (SRM). The SAS SRM tool is a procurement data analysis solution that can help reduce procurement costs and gain leverage over suppliers. The offering from SAS adds D&B business information for enhanced analytic functionality. Features include Web-enabled reporting, consulting services, and IBM hardware support, as well as what the company calls Supplier Portfolio Optimization (SPO).

"Often, companies struggle with understanding their supplier landscape," said Henry Morris, a data warehousing research VP at International Data Corporation, "They spend an enormous amount of time and money to get a handle on how much and what they buy. SRM helps companies identify their top suppliers, see how much they are spending with each and figure out ways to leverage their buying power."

"Knowing these answers could result in savings of up to 15% of a company's total procurement spending," said Christine Kelly, SAS program manager for SRM. "This can translate into millions of dollars in savings for large companies."

The solution then tags all suppliers with a Dun & Bradstreet D-U-N-S Number, identifying every supplier in a company's database. This process can total dollars spent by all divisions of a company, consolidating buying power. These simple questions are often difficult for large organizations to answer because the data is scattered across multiple systems. In

The SPO component uses the information to build a portfolio of suppliers, which can increase purchasing leverage by consolidating suppliers, while meeting constraints on supplier quality, demographics, diversification, and budget. The system can score suppliers based of type of service, quality, and turnaround time, and feeds that information into a supplier balanced scorecard.

"To realize the greatest profitability and efficiency, a company must understand and manage its relationships with suppliers," said Larry Barth, VP of supply chain solutions for D&B. "The SAS Solution for Supplier Relationship Management allows a company to transform raw procurement data into strategic business intelligence in order to manage those relationships more effectively.