SpendHQ is providing enterprise-level spend visibility for one of the most recognized nonprofit brands in the U.S., the American Red Cross. By implementing the SpendHQ spend analytics solution, the American Red Cross can confidently identify sourcing opportunities and meet cost optimization goals.

Their Chief Procurement Officer and head of supply chain said: “After benchmarking spend analytic tools used across all industries, the American Red Cross selected SpendHQ based on our evaluation of their practitioner-built tool and practical approach.”

During a Spend Insights podcast, he shares his perspective on the role of procurement on overall business performance, the importance of spend analysis, and how it’s directly impacted their ability to create “fact-based” visibility while promoting supplier innovation and mitigating third-party risk.

They have about $3 billion in revenue, and their total addressable third-party supplier spend is close to 45% of their revenue that they want to manage.

He says it starts with business imperatives, which for them includes a cost gap that they need to close. They set targets with the business. “What gets measured gets managed.” They use SpendHQ to build with business partners more robust category strategies by looking at the data.

“We’ve invested in tools like SpendHQ to give us that visibility, transparency, and categorization of what that spend actually looks like. And why do we do that? Very simply, we are trying to make sure that of the dollars that we have, we are being good stewards of our donor dollars as well as the money that we make in our hospital business and our training business. We’re like anyone else, we need a return on our investment. So this is very critical for us in terms of business performance to have a better handle on our third-party spend.”

He praises the excellence of SpendHQ’s spend data taxonomy and classification to give them a solid foundation for the analysis and planning.