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Case studyMulti-location visibilityIT services

Five spreadsheets became one dashboard

An IT services company tracked its multi-location sourcing across five spreadsheets. Nxtby replaced them with one dashboard covering spend, deliveries and issues across every location.

Credited to: Admin Director, enterprise client

5 → 1

Spreadsheets replaced by one dashboard

Read the story
Four colleagues around a table reviewing printed pages together

BeforeFive spreadsheets

AfterOne dashboard

At a glance

Business challenge
Multi-location sourcing tracked across five spreadsheets
Transformation focus
One shared dashboard in place of the five
Procurement area
Spend, delivery and issue visibility across locations
Outcome
5 → 1, spreadsheets replaced by one dashboard

The business challenge

Multi-location sourcing tracked across five spreadsheets

The client's Admin Director described multi-location sourcing tracked across five spreadsheets.

Five files means five places a number can live and five versions of it to reconcile. Answering a question that spans locations, what was spent, what was delivered, what went wrong, means assembling the picture from all of them first.

The homepage comparison puts visibility in vendor-by-vendor buying at zero. Five spreadsheets are what a team builds to make up for that.

“Multi-location sourcing finally has one dashboard instead of five spreadsheets.”
Admin Director, enterprise client (IT services)In the client’s own words; not independently verified by Nxtby.
  1. 01Five spreadsheets
  2. 02Spend in one place, deliveries in another
  3. 03Issues tracked separately
  4. 04A cross-location view assembled by hand
Schematic of the starting point. Labels are placeholders.

Before and after

Five spreadsheets, then one dashboard

Schematic. Spreadsheet and dashboard contents are placeholders, not client data or a product screenshot.

Before

Five spreadsheets

Multi-location sourcing tracked across five separate spreadsheets.

  1. Sourcing information split across five files
  2. Spend, deliveries and issues kept in different places
  3. A view across locations put together by hand

After

One dashboard

One dashboard covering spend, deliveries and issues across every location.

  1. One view for every location
  2. Spend, deliveries and issues in one place
  3. The same view for finance, operations and audit

5 → 1Spreadsheets replaced by one dashboard

What Nxtby implemented

One flow in, one view out

A dashboard is only as complete as what feeds it. The view replaced the spreadsheets because every location's requests now run through the same flow.

  1. Location

    Every site raises requests through the same request flow.

  2. Order

    Nxtby sources and places the order.

  3. Delivery

    Deliveries are tracked against the order.

  4. Issue

    Issues are raised and resolved by Nxtby.

Where it all lands

One view

Spend, deliveries and issues across every location, in one dashboard.

One view of spend, deliveries and issues, with every location on the same grid.

Illustrative. Locations are placeholders; no client figures are shown.

Outcomes and evidence

What the change produced

  • Reported outcome

    5 to 1

    spreadsheets

    Spreadsheets replaced by one dashboard

    How to read this figure

    Definition
    Separate spreadsheets used to track multi-location sourcing before, against one shared dashboard after.
    Period
    Not stated by the client
    Reported by
    Admin Director, enterprise client

And in how the work runs

  • One view for every site, in place of the five spreadsheets
  • Spend, deliveries and issues read from one place

Lessons and takeaways

What a procurement team can take from it

  1. Visibility follows the process

    One view could replace five files because every location's requests run through one flow. A dashboard over five processes is still five.

    A dashboard over five processes is still five. With every location's requests in one flow, one view can replace them.

  2. Decide the questions before the view

    Spend, deliveries and issues across locations are what this view answers. Naming them first is what keeps a dashboard from becoming a sixth spreadsheet.

    Spend, deliveries and issues across locations, named before the view is built; built the other way round, it becomes a sixth spreadsheet.

  3. One view serves more than one team

    Finance, operations and audit read the same numbers rather than each keeping their own copy.

    Finance, operations and audit each keeping a copy, against all three reading the same numbers from one view.

Diagrams are schematic and illustrate each lesson. They are not the client’s systems or data.

Next step

Bring your spreadsheets to the conversation

Tell us how many locations you buy for and where you track it today. We will show you what one view across them would look like.

Talk to a procurement expert
  • No cost and no obligation
  • No software rolled out to your teams
  • No change to how approvals are decided

What happens next

  1. You tell us how it runs today

    How many sites you buy for, which categories are bought repeatedly, and how a request reaches a supplier today.

  2. We come back with the picture

    What one contracted position across those categories would look like: the catalogue, the approval limits and where ordering would stay local.

  3. You decide what, if anything, moves

    Most operations start with a single category at a handful of sites. Nothing is committed by having the conversation.

Talk to us

Talk to a Procurement Specialist

Tell us how many locations you buy for and where you track it today. We will show you what one view across them would look like.