The Procurement Business Community within the organization is keenly focused on ensuring that supplies are delivered on-time, meet quality standards, and are priced competitively. Failure to receive supplies on-time can disrupt the entire supply chain and lead to production delays, excess operational costs, and lost sales. Poor quality supplies can cause similar problems, with potential costs especially high if the quality deficiencies are not realized until far down the value chain. Active monitoring of supplier price variations directly impacts the bottom line, and companies with globally diverse suppliers face an extra challenge from currency volatility.
Sterna Business Positioning System™ (BPS) delivers prepackaged analytics libraries specific to the procurement Business Community that are leveraged to rapidly deliver a business analytics solution to managers of this Business Community.
Procurement Packaged Libraries
Sterna Packaged Libraries for the procurement Business Community include a broad set of business schemas, mathematical models, and graphical Business Views to provide a complete picture of the procurement Business Community and its business dependencies across the enterprise. Each Business View features a Money Surface™ that bridges the operational performance with its financial implications so that managers can instantly navigate to the opportunities offering maximum impact.
Procurement executives focus on answering questions such as:
Are our suppliers delivering as promised?
Are our suppliers meeting quality standards?
Are we paying competitive prices? How are prices being affected by global currency fluctuations?
Do we have sufficient flexibility to adjust ordering against demand variations?
Are we taking advantage of our strategic supplier relationships? Are those relationships delivering value?
Below is a subset of the Business Views that are provided in the Procurement Packaged Libraries (each Business View has its corresponding business schema and mathematical functions, not described herein) that help address the above questions and more:
Supplier OTIF % (On Time, In Full)
Cost Reduction
Materials Cost per Ton
Supplier Tail
Supplier Lead Time
Supplier Concentration
Materials Returns %
Order Efficiency
% Supplied by Strategic Supplier
Supplier Order Fulfillment %
RM, PM & Outsource Inventory days
Materials Cost per Unit
DPO (Days Payables Outstanding)
Materials Defect Rate
Material Usage
And more…
Business Dependencies
By utilizing functionality provided by the Procurement Packaged Libraries, managers quickly understand the dependencies within their community and across other communities and how they translate into financial impact. With Sterna BPS, Procurement managers are equipped to answer more complex questions, such as:
Does the supplier with the lowest material cost per ton also have the worst OTIF percentage?
Can we shift to a supplier who offers comparable prices but delivers with consistently shorter lead time?
Do predicted changes in exchange rates mean that the planned supplier mix should be altered in the next quarter?
Custom Business Views
Sterna BPS provides the flexibility to rapidly develop custom functionality, be it custom prediction models, business schema, and/or presentation views.
