The P-Card Treasure Trove: Uncover What Your Spend Data is Hiding

As a procurement leader, you know every dollar counts. Yet your organization's P-Card and T&E Card programs likely contain hidden opportunities to drive savings, enhance compliance, improve productivity, and boost your team's credibility.

Procurement Intel's proprietary P-Card analysis shines a spotlight on this shadow spend. Our detailed transaction assessments detect off-contract buying, new supplier opportunities and potential fraud. We uncover the root causes behind non-compliant purchasing so you can implement targeted fixes. Our analytics also spotlight productivity pitfalls buried in your data so you can optimize operations.

In short, we transform P-Card spend data into insights that tighten compliance, inform supplier negotiations, flag suspicious transactions, and reduce productivity losses. This ultimately unlocks meaningful cost savings while advancing your procurement strategy.

Compliance Gaps Exposed, Fixed

Take this real-world example from a Fortune 1000 company. At first glance, spend seemed within normal ranges. But a card spend analysis uncovered hundreds of Amazon purchases when Amazon wasn't an approved supplier. Surveying employees revealed Amazon's competitive pricing on office supplies, like toner, drove the unauthorized buys. 

Equipped with those insights, the company's Category Manager renegotiated pricing with their office supplies vendor and communicated the improved pricing to buyers. As a result, spend shifted back to the approved supplier and compliance skyrocketed to an all-time high.

Informed Supplier Negotiations

The illuminating power of P-Card analytics also enables more informed supplier negotiations. For one global manufacturer, spend analysis revealed their office supplies contract was in jeopardy. The incumbent vendor warned the company it was falling short of the spend threshold required to maintain their negotiated pricing, while also putting an expected six-figure rebate at risk.

Procurement Intel's assessment uncovered over 30% of office supply spend leaked to Office Depot, Amazon, Walmart, and other unauthorized sellers. Armed with data-backed insights on the actual buying patterns, the procurement team negotiated to retain existing pricing in return for tighter compliance controls. They also partnered to right-size the rebate relative to the revealed attainable spend volumes. By leveraging a P-Card spend analysis, the company transformed a contentious situation into an opportunity to enhance the supplier relationship and program performance.

Uncovering Hidden Fraud

Lurking within P-Card data could also be signs of fraud. For one organization, their spend analysis uncovered an alarming purchase pattern. A single employee made over 700 transactions under $50 over three years - almost one for every work day. The company's policy didn't require receipts for sub-$50 buys, creating the perfect loophole for long-term theft. With no oversight, the employee quietly exploited the weakness, stealing over $35,000 through small purchases that evaded attention.

Situations like this illustrate how rigorous P-Card analytics surfaced by Procurement Intel can detect potential fraud and non-compliance. By shining a light on suspicious transactions and patterns, we enable companies to tighten controls and deter future abuse before it impacts the bottom line. Both our data analysis capabilities along with our procurement acumen are essential to uncovering and addressing fraud risks hidden in P-Card spend.

Spotlighting Productivity Pitfalls

Digging into P-Card data can also reveal productivity drains. For one construction firm, Procurement Intel spotted thousands of trips to home improvement stores from job sites. Employees made multiple runs per day, often for small purchases under $150. With the nearest retailer 30+ minutes away, these frequent trips resulted in hundreds of lost labor hours, pulling their skilled labor off-site.

Armed with granular visibility into the issue, the company took action. They hired lower-cost runners to handle store trips and worked with suppliers to deliver more materials to job sites directly. By eliminating excessive trips to stores and lost productivity, they optimized labor, controlled costs, and kept major projects on schedule. The transformational power of data helped them transition from simply accepting the problem to actively improving performance.

P-Card analytics from Procurement Intel enlightens scenarios like this. By exposing productivity pitfalls hidden in transactions, we help transform spend data into operational insights that spark measurable improvements enterprise-wide.

Let Procurement Intel shed new light on your P-Card and T&E Card spend. Contact us today to learn how our intelligent spend analytics can uncover hidden treasure in your transaction data.