Spend Under Management (S-U-M)
Get a birds eye view of your company's spending through TCG's S-U-M approach and reap the benefits of broad spend visibility.
What is Broad S-U-M?
Broad Spend Under Management (S-U-M) simply means everything - all company and employee initiated spend.
Looking at managing spend beyond traditional T&E is TCG’s fourth spend hierarchy (click here to see). S-U-M, otherwise known as the Spend Under Management, drives organizations to a self-funded program transformation with improve financial terms, new spend insights, controls, efficiencies, and savings by capturing all cardable company and employee-initiated spend.
Essential Components to Maximize Spend Under Management (S-U-M)
- A spend management solution that can provide comprehensive end-to-end integrated workflow-related processes, controls, and functionality
- A payment system program that provides traditional and next-generation payment solutions for varying spend profiles
- Strategic program management for the integration of Travel, Meetings, Payment, and Expense (TMPE)
- Involvement of multiple stakeholder groups within an organization
These are only a few of the essential components. Contact us to learn more.
Is your organization ready to optimize S-U-M? Here are some key questions to ask:
- Do your travelers and other users apply their corporate cards for 85% of their travel and expense payments?
- Is your organization's spend management strategies driving results?
- Does your expense solution provide enhanced spend information to understand buying decisions at the point of sale?
- Are you patching together information from multiple systems relying on manual processes for reporting?
- Do your decision-makers have access to real-time dashboard analytics that link end-to-end spend management?
- Do all your commercial payment solutions integrate into a single spend management platform?
- Does your expense solution leverage a network of ecosystem functionalities that enable end-to-end integration visibility for spend management?
If you’re missing out on any of these, then you have a case for opportunity and optimization.
A well managed program with a spend management solution can deliver significant savings and process efficiencies for the organization.
Optimizing Spend Under Management (S-U-M)
Most companies find it overwhelming to engage across functional areas of the organization. Start by setting budgets and funding required to implement a solution by opportunity gained through Corporate Card supplier rebates, by expanding broad S-U-M, and targeting the indirect spend. Many procurement departments already focus on the tail spend and this goes beyond strategic vendors. By conducting an assessment of payment solutions and expense management processes, you can develop a road map that outlines opportunities, timelines, and ROI associated with different strategies. Don’t worry about costs, a self-funding model will appear.
Organizations can identify multiple quick wins that can be implemented with low effort, low cost, and provide immediate results within the existing processes and solutions.
Strategic changes require additional time, a longer timeline, and change management efforts. However, strategic changes solidify opportunities and ensure a long-term solution is in place that will continue to guarantee expanded broad S-U-M for incremental savings, rebates, and other benefits.
Strategic sourcing may be required to engage new solutions or expand on an existing solution. Optimization combines existing, expansion, and new solutions that deliver the spend management strategy.
5 Steps to Get Started
- Conduct an Opportunity Assessment
- Strategy and Roadmap
- Identify Quick Wins
- Invest in Strategic Changes
- Scale and Grow
Learn more about how TCG’s S-U-M approach is utilized in our Payment Spend Optimization Practice and Cardable Expansion services.
Download TCG’s Global Insights White Paper on the importance of increasing S-U-M, Cardable Spend opportunities, and more.
Learn about Card Management and the difference between traditional tactical card admistration vs strategic card management.