Category Management: Overcoming Barriers to Sources of Value and Innovation in Your Supply Base

Category management is nothing new to the world of procurement. Created in the 1980s, the methodology was first introduced as a process of grouping products into specific categories based on how consumers used them.

White category management is widely used in the retail industry, frankly, procurement teams in any industry who purchase and manage a multitude of goods or services can take advantage of category management principles to improve supply chain transparency, and alignment and save money.

But, if category management is truly that important – and JAGGAER agrees that it is – why is it not more widely adopted?

In this paper you will learn how to:

• Set expectations through detailed analysis. The more you can connect the dots between suppliers and relevant external forces, the more powerful the data.
• Combine category strategy with optimal levers. Understanding what category management means for your organization and identifying the data that is needed to track performance against category-specific KPIs.
• Harness the power of actionable visibility. Appropriately leveraging the information about each category and deploying technology to increase category management efficiency.

Our white paper, Category Management: Overcoming Barriers to Sources of Value and Innovation in Your Supply Base, provides a better understanding of the category management process in purchasing and reveals the three most common barriers to defined, operationalized category management: expectations, strategy, and visibility.