Do you remember the first time you ever played Monopoly? Maybe you played with an older sibling or perhaps with a parent. It could have been that the whole family was involved. For most people, playing Monopoly was their first introduction to basic economics, and many of us can recall that awful moment of realizing that we did not have enough cash to buy Park Place once we landed on it. Purchasing it was usually still an option, of course, but we were forced with the gut wrenching decision of whether or not to mortgage every last one of our properties in order to do so. Though at the time we did not know a name for the experience, it was our first encounter with spend management, and neither of the proposed solutions to our dilemma seemed very appealing: either don’t buy the property or mortgage everything.
We are not little anymore, and it may have been quite some time since we sat down to a game of Monopoly, but the principles of spend management are still a part of the rules of the game. That is, businesses and corporations are constantly seeking ways to both control and to get the most out of the money they spend. In order to do so, they cut operating costs or look for bargains on supplies.
To be successful at Monopoly, a player has to take into consideration the whole board and what opportunities to generate revenue might exist in the future. The game cannot be won simply on the desire to purchase Park Place on this turn. In business, spend management focuses on the whole board, so to speak. It is an all-encompassing view of the business that takes into consideration how one procures goods, the costs involved, what functions of the business are done in-house and what is outsourced, how bills are invoiced and when, and the procedure for collecting on outstanding bills, among other things.
If you own a business, you are looking to generate the very best spend management solutions possible, not just so that you can increase revenue, but to increase worth by being able to produce merchandise and/or services. Although one person may have oversight of all the various elements of the business that would need to be considered in an effort to discover solutions to spend management that are effective, it is very difficult for only one or two people to amass, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate so much information at once. Consequently, software developers have designed programs that can take all of the spend management data that has been accumulated to produce reports that can facilitate spend management solutions. If you want your business to play for keeps, spend management solutions are essential for your success, and software is available to assist you in reaching the best decisions possible.
