Spendata: Built for Exploration
Spendata is a complete do-it-yourself spend analysis system, running entirely in your browser.
Here are a few of its many features.
If you know how to use Excel, you are ready to build amazing reports with Spendata. Spendata will parse Workbooks for source data, populate models, and produce native Excel files complete with embedded pivot tables and graphs. Step-by-step videos show you how.
Quick Look: Create Reports with Excel
Quick Look: Create Reports with Excel
Data is never in the exact form you need it to be. With Spendata, you can map and family the data to support your analysis on the fly -- without invoking other applications or third parties and without losing state or context -- while retaining full and simultaneous access to all your Views. All familying and mapping operations are saved and auto-applied to new data, in the exact order that you applied them.
- Reorganize data on the fly. Map or family anything.
- Map spending to your own classification schemas
- Experiment freely, because you can revert back to automatic date- and time-stamped checkpoints
The ability to rapidly create, apply, and modify data filters is fundamental to a productive spend analysis. Spendata’s filtering process is both simple and remarkably powerful. Drag an item from any View to create an instant “filter coin” that contains the underlying transactions.
- Drop the filter coin on any View to filter it.
- Drop the filter coin on the desktop to save it for later.
- Select and mark an item or group of items to create additional filter coins.
- Create both positive and negative filters -- i.e., a filter coin can represent “this and this, but not that or that.”
- Extensive filter histories are stored with every View, and prior filters can be edited and re-applied at any time.
One of the challenges of spend analysis is associating multiple datasets with each other through logical, user-defined links. With Spendata you can create multiple associations between the same datasets, or a single association across multiple datasets.
- Create associations based on high-level concepts like “Vendor Name” rather than on low-level “keys” that can’t deliver the results you want.
- Never worry about the complications of one-to-many relationships, because Spendata is careful to avoid duplicated or missing data.
- Easily track similarities and differences between datasets via seamless cross-dataset filtering
Spendata can compare the values of any View from the perspective of two different filters. You get immediate answers to the perennial question: how does spending for this (period, business unit, region, vendor, etc.) compare with another? Show the comparison as a % or difference within each cell of the View. Dump the complete list of comparisons to Excel for further analysis or import it as a linked dataset.
Quick Look: Compares
Indulge your creative side by creating and cloning Dashboards, Columns, and Views while running Spendata.
- Group Views together for concurrent filtering.
- Create independent views for exploring your data which you can toss when you are done or save away for reference.
- Separate unrelated analyses by creating additional Workspaces.
- Share Workspaces among Spendata users with just a few clicks.
Views can be customized in dozens of useful ways. For example:
- Views can be unidimensional blocks or multidimensional crosstabs with unlimited complexity on either axis.
- View items can be values, counts, or lists, from any dataset or linked dataset, or even user-built computations.
- View items can be sorted by name or value.
- Move to the location of any item within any crosstab with a built-in search function.
- Examine or download the complete list of underlying raw transactions behind any View item to facilitate conversations with buyers and managers.
Your data remains on your machine and is never transmitted to a server. This eliminates the security risks associated with transmission and remote storage of your data. Furthermore, because Spendata’s work is done entirely inside the browser, and it is not sharing a remote resource with other users, the application can:
- be highly responsive
- perform complex processing tasks that a server must refuse
The video library walks you through the many powerful features built into Spendata and guides you through examples of savings culled from successful spend analysis engagements.
- How to use Spendata
- How to find value
- How to implement a Spend Management workflow
