Collaborative Category Management

As more and more processes are digitalized and global supply chains become increasingly complex and volatile, strategic decision-making cycles are becoming ever shorter. Procurement organizations are having to develop and directly implement their procurement strategies with greater dynamism.

There is a need here to define and co-ordinate the strategic measures that add value in line with the complex situations encountered throughout the entire value chain. 

As they move in this direction, procurement organizations see themselves confronted by a wide variety of challenges:

The lack of transparency and standards in the category strategy process as well as the increasing complexity and volatility in global supply chains pose major challenges

for traditional category management. The result? High administrative expenditure and, frequently, loss of knowledge caused by staff turnover. Inadequate crossfunctional

co-operation means that strategic optimization measures often remain only an idea. Implementation fails because of the not-invented-here syndrome. Potential value add is not exploited.

With KPMG Collaborative Category Management, we offer a digital platform for developing category strategies on our Sofy suite. It can help you analyze data/knowledge, move on to identify optimization levers and complete the process by tracking the measures that have been derived. Collaborative Category Management enables category managers to take a proactive approach and identify opportunities and potential savings to orchestrate value creation on a centralized basis jointly with all stakeholders involved.

Effectiveness: 

Collaborative Category Management is designed to enable close, ongoing and agile decision-making between category managers and stakeholders and thus increases the value contribution thanks to dynamic, strategic decisions for each Category. Thanks to cross-functional collaboration value contribution in terms of savings, innovation and risk minimization can be increased.

Efficiency: 

By integrating modern communication channels and workflows in the design, the efficiency of the cooperation between all active stakeholders can be increased, creating more time for value-adding activities. Skills and information are established as standard in the organization, compliance is ensured.

Strategy: 

Using Collaborative Category Management, the procurement organization positions itself as a digital pioneer in its own organization. As a function with the most internal and external interfaces, it becomes an agile value added manager.