Data-Driven Decision Making: A Closer Look at NTU's Procurement Transformation

From supplier spend information to assessing KPIs for critical decision-making, many are harnessing data for these widespread benefits in the procurement function. With slow and steady strides made towards it, NTU is tapping into vast generated data for day-to-day transactions, governance issues, and policy review. The university uses various data sources such as SAP and Ariba to track all their transactions and actual payment made. It has become more and more evident that data demands a nuanced approach when diving and extracting insights from them. It rings as no surprise that advanced analytics can help the function to achieve cost savings of up to 3 to 8 percent compared to traditional practices.

Kenneth Lim, Head of NTU Shared Services, shares his insights on how to keep data clean – reducing the complexities embedded in them so that enhanced data transparency is achieved with the right blend of technology and a data-literate team. This helps them to capitalise on opportunities that emerge in preparing for the future ahead. He goes further in-depth into:

• Collecting and amalgamating data from a multitude of sources and understand how spending happens, thereby projecting adjustments based on their budget!
• Categorising upstream data to enhance accuracy – ensuring that spending is reorganised and redistributed in the correct category tree.
• Working with data on an operational level – factors such as turn-around time and service levels across different phases of the procurement process are monitored closely to understand when and where intervention must be executed.
• Breaking down data in the environment to advise where changes in spending have emerged and what further steps need to be taken to optimise them.