What is Category Workbench?

Category workbench provides insight, decision assistance, and a long-term planning center for procurement activities like sourcing, procurement, contract administration, and supplier relationship management.   

A category workbench is an act of categorizing and organizing the supplies an organization needs to ease the process of preparing for their acquisition and use.

Perhaps you've reached a point where it's becoming more challenging to manage merchandise entering your warehouse, or you're searching for more solid answers on where your money is being spent. 

As a one-point reference for all category related enquiries and information, the category workbench provides the visibility, decision support and strategic planning hub around which procurement processes like sourcing, purchasing, contract management and supplier management can work most efficiently.

Process of Category Workbench  

Categorizing the materials that an enterprise buys from its suppliers may appear to be merely another attempt to maintain detailed records, but there are several other aspects that require careful consideration. From opportunity analysis, project planning to complete source-to-pay processes, category workbench helps enterprises get the desired value and stakeholder engagement across the board.

Conclusion  

Category managers need a comprehensive category management workbench with real-time information. It helps identify the key cost drivers and influencing factors, capture strategic plans and drive them through execution to deliver realized savings. In an ideal scenario, category workbench — from a single dashboard — enables category managers to review the performance of an enterprise’s critical suppliers, observe savings from multiple parameters including project-wise, by sourcing event, and by region.