In this episode of AOP Introducing, Helen Mackenzie speaks with Richard Brown, Head of Sales and Marketing at Anvil Analytical, a supply chain analytics SaaS provider that addresses complex issues like spend analytics, carbon management, market data and inflation, among others, as well as offering custom analytics for global clients. Richard shares Anvil’s rapid evolution from services-based to analytics and how Anvil provides differentiated value in an increasingly crowded procure tech ecosystem, especially when it comes to spend.
Just a few years after launching their first spend analytics product, Anvil Analytical has evolved from a purely services-based organization to a more comprehensive supply chain analytics business that offers both off-the-shelf and custom solutions for today’s increasingly complex supply chain.
“Anvil started its life within a services company, and there was a real need for the consultants to go in and hit the ground running really quickly from day one,” said Richard. “Now a big part of the business is around savings programs and driving costs out of organizations.”
This is also what sets the business apart from a growing number of procurement tech solutions. “Anvil is a little different because it has evolved past a lot of other tools in the marketplace that focus on charts and movement and visibility,” he said. “Anvil is laser-focused within the world of savings.”
Anvil does this by collecting large batches of external benchmarks, pricing, and other indices that they combine with the client’s data before overlaying their own procurement-based algorithm. The result? Detailed insights pages that provide actionable interpretations of the data clients can use to identify savings and opportunities to improve their category strategy.
This is just one aspect of the solution, Richard says. Anvil’s other products extend to include carbon management, market data, inflation, project management, and more.
Anvil’s work with one company, RS Components, is a great example of how they are able to take a large amount of data and, instead of being overwhelming, turn that spend data into custom dashboards that are easy to reference, actionable, highly configurable, and enable the client to drill down through multiple layers of data.
“We’ve found that spend tools can be overwhelming,” but by using Anvil to gain a better view of the data, he said, “procurement can actually see the difference – period versus period, month versus month, quarter versus quarter – and that is really powerful.”
