Tropic

We're extremely excited to welcome Russell Lester as our new Chief Financial Officer 🎉 Russell brings over two decades of experience leading financial and operational transformation at successful companies of all stages (most notably as #CFO at Calendly and Versapay). His vision that CFOs are strategic business partners and proactive agents of change aligns with how Tropic wants to continue to impact #spendmanagement and uplevel the #finance function. In his words, finance leaders "have the full opportunity to transform how procurement and spend management operate together." 🌴 Get to know Russell in our full announcement 👉 https://lnkd.in/dNy-DJ8y

5 current trends that impact how you buy #software in a belt-tightening market 👇 1. Aggressive supplier uplifts have increased dramatically 2. Willingness to consider alternatives is at an all-time high 3. Rationalization is frequently on your CFO's mind 4. Scrutiny from finance/budget holders has increased 5. Greater emphasis on accessing/using strong data to gain leverage 👆 These patterns affect CRPO (current remaining performance obligation) and ACV (annual contract value) – important for any #finance, #procurement, and even revenue leader to understand. Understand these trends better (with actionable tips) in our latest blog from Michael Shields: https://lnkd.in/gMBmcu7S

Here’s a quick example of how spend management can be a competitive advantage. (Which in this market can seriously be life or death for a company). Every month I do a 30 minute Spend Review with our Head of Procurement Strategy, Michael Shields. Running this process out of the Tropic platform a year ago would have been nearly impossible: too many sharp edges, data inconsistencies, and enough question marks to cast doubt on the whole thing. Thanks to the constant feedback from our customers, the vigilant efforts from out GTM teams to advocate for feature gaps, and the diligent work from our design, product, and engineering orgs, last week’s spend review was the first where I felt the full leverage of the Tropic platform to give me visibility into our spend, and control around where we’re spending. These updates have allowed us to evolve from reactive to proactive purchasing, getting way ahead of our renewals, and maximizing the efficiency of our spend. Here’s our process: 🔹 Step 1: Visibility into upcoming spend Pull up my favorite report that shows a snapshot of the status of all upcoming Contracts in the next 6 months, and the status of those Contracts. 🔹 Step 2: Near-term pipeline health We then look at contracts renewing in the next three months to determine the health of our pipeline ▪ Are we wrapped up on Contracts that are renewing in the next month?  ▪ Are all Requests in for Contracts that renew in the next three months? ▪ Are we at risk of missing any key dates due to delays?  ▪ Are the proposals we’re getting from our Suppliers fair according to our benchmark intelligence? We can seamlessly answer these questions based on reporting views in Tropic, and compile a list of action items. 🔹 Step 3: Mid-term strategic purchasing We look at contracts renewing in the 3-6 month range to critically evaluate needs over the next year. If we wish to move away from any of these tools, we need to start those conversations now, because it’s no small effort to remove an embedded software tool. We’re still small enough of an org that I have a good grasp on how we’re using our big ticket tools across the org, and can push for a re-justification on spend where I may have questions. 🔹 Step 4: Action Items Shields and I summarize the action items for this month and he takes next steps with each stakeholder. It’s taken many months of banging our heads against the wall to get to this point. Next on the horizon, automating the entire workflow above with AI 😉

How to simplify procurement planning in 4 steps to develop an initial process within 100 days 👇 1️⃣ Baseline your spend: Organize suppliers and contracts in one place to improve visibility 2️⃣ Build a brand: Develop relationships with internal and external stakeholders to reduce “procurement bypass” and get buy-in   3️⃣ Get points on the board: Leverage data and insights to start sourcing and negotiating 4️⃣ Get early-buy-in: Implement a simple purchasing policy for stakeholders to follow By day 100, #Finance and #Procurement teams now have better visibility, a pipeline of opportunities, a V1 design of processes, and an early network of supporters. Take a page out of Michael Shields' book and learn how to build a strong foundation and scalable procurement process in our latest blog: https://lnkd.in/ggwhu8Jf

Just in case you didn't catch our latest webinar with Tropic, Populi and Anthropic on 'Finance & Accounting Best Practices for High-Growth Teams', we've collated all the insightful takeaways right here for you. Interested in learning more about how Campfire can help you? Check us out at https://bit.ly/3WhgerW

We're honored to be recognized as a G2 grid leader in SaaS spend management, strategic sourcing, and purchasing! 🌴 Our customers are continuing to find value – using Tropic to proactively manage their spend and identify ways to gain leverage, drive savings, and increase procurement efficiencies. 💪 #spendmanagement #procurement #SaaS

The days of rubber-stamping spend approvals are over. Finance leaders are (rightfully so) pushing back. But here’s the problem: Much of the pushback is on new spend. Whereas legacy spend has an easier time getting through. I personally think that’s backwards. 
Here’s why: Legacy spend was often approved during the good years. When money grew on trees. 
New spend is being scrutinized and measured against a raised bar. My recommendation: Take a good hard look at the spend you have approved in the past few years (it’s likely a lot!). 
If it were new spend today, would you still approve it? If you wouldn’t approve it as new spend today, you probably shouldn’t approve it as renewing spend either. #Spendmanagement #Finance

How to increase visibility to manage spend more effectively ⤵ After all, you can't manage what you can't see. Without visibility, effective #spendmanagement is hard to achieve as these aspects below become very difficult to do: ⚙ Improving control 🛠 Optimizing efficiency 💰 Driving cost savings You’d be surprised at how many companies lack proper visibility into their spend. To get on the right track, #finance and #procurement teams can lay a strong foundation and increase visibility through these 8 steps 👇

Here's a common dilemma (and how to fix it): Procurement achieves strong results for the organization, but the CFO is still disappointed. According to Chandhrika Venkataraman and Michael Shields, you can mitigate that disappointment by leveraging spend data to set proper expectations up front. That's your key to gaining stakeholder alignment. Keep your #CFO happy by 👇 1️⃣ Using spend data to communicate realistic goals (even provide an updated forecast) 2️⃣ Using spend data to present potential options and outcomes (then let your stakeholder decide which path to proceed) Learn how to do all this in our latest blog: https://lnkd.in/gYd3wgkh

#Finance and #Procurement teams overlook one important area when trying to increase internal adoption of their purchasing process: User Experience 👆 According to Michael Shields, that should always be your starting point when looking to drive adoption. After all, no one likes a bad buying or checkout experience. 🛒 Use these 5 guiding questions to improve the user experience of your purchasing process and increase stakeholder adoption 👇