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Finance & Accounting (F&A) is one of the most important organizational functions that plays a key role in managing ongoing activities such as monetary transactions, ensuring tax and regulatory compliance, and supporting the business in future planning through working capital management, financial planning and analysis, risk management, and corporate development and strategy. This category strategy template is ready-to-use, with editable frameworks for internal assessment and detailed industry and market category overviews to assist category managers, procurement professionals, and CPOs in creating an informed category strategy for F&A.  

A category strategy is a planning document that helps define what needs to be done to drive effective management of category spend. The creation of this plan requires close collaboration between procurement and business to define internal needs and category objectives and drive the development of a category action plan. Multiple tools and techniques, such as total cost modeling, make vs. buy assessment, buyer profile assessment, and supply market analysis, are used for this process. Best-in-class procurement organizations effectively leverage such tools and techniques to drive continuous improvements in their categories.

The template can be customized by category managers with internal category information, such as spend, suppliers, and subcategory overview. The category manager can also use industry and market insights provided in this template to build a strong supply base understanding. The goal of a category strategy is to create an action plan for effective category management, and this template provides the requisite tools, frameworks, and information to create a robust strategy.

Scope

All industries and geographies

Category in focus: F&A

Contents

In this category strategy, we provide templates based on a four-step process to assist the creation of a category strategy:

• Define internal needs: defining category maturity and objectives, creating a buyer profile to gauge current state of the supply base and predict future demand, and total cost modeling
• Understand the market: building an understanding of the industry and supply base by evaluating market elements such as market trends, key suppliers, major delivery locations, pricing trends, performance benchmarks, and category risks
• Determine sourcing strategy: deciding in-house versus outsourced model for the category and identifying best practices and value levers to drive category efficiency
• Create action plan: identifying and prioritizing projects and driving them toward execution