Cognitive Sourcing Maturity Assessment
Welcome to the Cognitive Sourcing Maturity Assessment
- 1.
What is the number of (direct materials) suppliers are actively managed by the organization?
- 2.
How often are sourcing professionals sent for training and continuing education?
- A.
Informally
- B.
Annually
- C.
1-2 times per year
- D.
Quarterly
- E.
Continuously
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- 3.
What percentage of these suppliers actively participate in a sourcing event / competitive bid at least one time per year?
- 4.
What percentage of total direct materials spend is strategically sourced / managed (vs. the "tail spend")?
- A.
- B.
30 - 50%
- C.
50 - 75%
- D.
75 - 90%
- E.
90%+
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- 5.
What is the frequency of scheduled sourcing events or RFQs per year?
- A.
Primarily ad hoc, not executed on a regular pre-defined schedule
- B.
Primarily Annual events with most suppliers
- C.
Quarterly events for key sub commodities or groups of suppliers.
- D.
Weekly events executed for key sub commodities or suppliers.
- E.
Continuous sourcing with suppliers or sub commodities as needed based on market conditions.
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- 6.
What percentage of total suppliers participate in a sourcing event or competitive bid process at least once a year?
- A.
- B.
30 - 50%
- C.
50 - 75%
- D.
75 - 90%
- E.
90%+
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- 7.
What percentage of time do sourcing professionals spend “putting out fires?”
- A.
0-5%
- B.
5-15%
- C.
15-25%
- D.
25-50%
- E.
50%+
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- 8.
As an organization, how do you measure effectiveness and performance of the strategic sourcing function?
- A.
Informal - Develop informal goals at category level and goals are subject to change.
- B.
Annual Cost Savings Focused - Year over year goals are primarily savings focused, are based upon previous experience and driven from leadership.
- C.
Sustainable Cost Management - Targeted cost savings looking at longer term and sustainable cost management dynamically tied to industry benchmarks.
- D.
Value Creation - Performance expectations are mutually guided including variable compensation/bonuses for meeting performance goals which aren't always savings focused but rather include: avoiding risk, achieving opportunities, and discovering innovations.
- E.
Real Time Orchestration Performance expectations are more real-time and detailed yielding more accurate predictions that result in the ability to capitalize more quickly to changing market conditions. Involves cross-functional decision making and orchestration across finance, supply chain, and product engineering teams.
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- 9.
With digital transformation approaching supply chain and procurement, is your sourcing professionals team and talent ready to take this on?
- A.
1 (low readiness, resistant to change)
- B.
2
- C.
3
- D.
4
- E.
5 (high readiness, rapidly adopting)
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- 10.
What tools and technologies are utilized to support strategic sourcing intelligence and negotiation outcomes:
- A.
Home-grown Excel tools
- B.
Excel-based templates & data warehouses
- C.
Business Intelligence system focused on spend analysis and cost management
- D.
Purpose built sourcing platform with integrated market intelligence services
- E.
Cognitive Sourcing platform (predictive insights, integrated market intelligence, AI recommendation engine)
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- 11.
How does your organization typically negotiate with suppliers? Please check all that apply.
- A.
Primarily price or cost-focused negotiations
- B.
Utilize internal KPIs to direct negotiations
- C.
Discuss KPIs and external benchmarks with suppliers
- D.
Cross-functional considerations are represented in negotiations
- E.
Artificial Intelligence provides negotiation recommendations
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- 12.
On average, how many calendar days does it take to conduct a strategic sourcing event from baseline collection to contract execution?
- A.
- B.
10 - 30 Days: Most events are "two bids and a buy"
- C.
30 - 60 Days: We keep events small and digestible and utilize tools to ease baseline collection and analysis
- D.
60+ Days: Tools and techniques allow us to consolidate into fewer, much larger events that take more time to collect bids and obtain internal approvals
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- 13.
On average, how much time is spent collecting and preparing baseline data for a sourcing event?
- A.
- B.
2 - 5 days: Our systems are all integrated with data cleansed and maintained on a continual basis
- C.
5 - 15 days: Our events are very small and suppliers help provide the data
- D.
15 - 30 days: Data is extracted from a Spend cube and/or purpose-built category management tools, so a majority of the time is fine-tuning and getting stakeholder approval.
- E.
30+ days: Need to pull data from multiple sources, requires manual manipulation, then push into a reporting tool to gain stakeholder approval.
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- 14.
On average, how much time is spent designing and building an RFx?
- A.
14+ days: We reference previous events / templates, but given the large scope of events we revisit and potentially redesign events.
- B.
- C.
1 - 5 days: Our events are simple and we typically start from what was done previously.
- D.
5 - 14 days: We typically start from previous events / templates, but review for updates.
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- 15.
What supply management data sources are managed in systems? Check all that apply.
- A.
Supplier insights and master data information is managed by individual commodity managers
- B.
Supplier insights and related spend information is stored centrally
- C.
Event / Transaction histories are stored centrally
- D.
Performance / Risk KPIs are monitored and shared centrally
- E.
Bill of Materials are maintained at raw material / commodity level
- F.
Recommendations and actions driven by AI
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- 16.
How important is it to have New Product Introduction (NPI) system that tracks risks and opportunities during development as well as connects to sustaining cost systems and processes?
- A.
1 (low importance)
- B.
2
- C.
3
- D.
4
- E.
5 (critical for sustaining value)
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- 17.
What technologies solutions does your organization use or plan to implement in the near future?
- A.
Digital/Personal Assistants
- B.
Contract Lifecycle Management
- C.
Sourcing Automation - RFx
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- 18.
About what % of your Direct Materials spend is captured in your Spend Analysis systems or tools?
- A.
We extract data from our ERP to analyze Spend
- B.
- C.
50-75%
- D.
75-95%
- E.
95%+
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- 19.
On average, how much time is spent evaluating bids and providing feedback to suppliers?
- A.
- B.
1 - 5 days: Our events are limited in scope so we can typically churn through analysis and feedback quickly, albeit manually.
- C.
3 - 5 days: Our sourcing tools provide nice reports and collaboration tools to analyze bids, then make feedback fairly easy to distribute.
- D.
5-10 days: Our sourcing tools help aggregate bid information, but we analyze in a separate BI tool then distribute feedback.
- E.
10+ days: We run large events and although our category-specific tools help aggregate bid data and analysis, it takes time to interpret the results then distribute internally to prepare feedback.
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- 20.
On average, how much time is spent preparing for and conducting negotiations?
- A.
- B.
1-3 days: Although we manually prepare for negotiations, the scope is limited so we're able to complete it quickly.
- C.
3-5 days: We extract the data from our sourcing tools to feed our BI tool and/or create our negotiation materials.
- D.
5-7 days: Our sourcing tools help identify negotiation opportunities.
- E.
7+ days: We run large events and although our category- specific tools identify negotiation opportunities, it takes time to align internally and prepare for large-scale negotiations.
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- 21.
Who typically leads preparation for the overall commodity/category strategy?
- A.
The Category/Commodity Manager
- B.
The Category/Commodity Manager + supporting business analysts
- C.
Cross-functional alignment with input from manufacturing partners, engineering, supply chain, and finance
- D.
Automated commodity/category strategy digital playbooks sourced from an AI/cognitive platform?
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- 22.
Please share your key contact information.
- 23.
What kind of a superhero are you?
- A.
Option 1
- B.
Option 2
- C.
Option 3
- D.
Option 4
- E.
Option 5
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- 24.
What is the total annual direct materials spend for your organization?
- A.
< $500M
- B.
$500M - $1B
- C.
$1B - $2B
- D.
$2B - $5B
- E.
$5B+
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- 25.
About how many direct materials sourcing professionals are in your organization (including commodity/category manager, sourcing operations, buyers, business analysts, etc.)?
Quiz Review Timeline +
Our quizzes are rigorously reviewed, monitored and continuously updated by our expert board to maintain accuracy, relevance, and timeliness.
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Current Version
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Mar 13, 2023Quiz Edited by
ProProfs Editorial Team -
Apr 16, 2019Quiz Created by
Andrew Fincham
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