Insight
Procurement analysis in-house or by a consulting firm: what changes
Running a procurement analysis in-house or handing it to a consulting firm does not change the method: it changes the delay, the evidence and your ability to ask again. A firm produces your analysis; with Insight, your own team asks the question and gets the answer the same day.
The problem
The deliverable is often excellent. Its date is the problem
A procurement analysis engagement always follows the same cycle: scoping, extract requests, reworking in a spreadsheet, presentation. Six to ten weeks, a good part of it spent rebuilding a spend base nobody had consolidated before.
The report lands after the decision it was meant to inform. The committee rules with what it has at hand, then reads the analysis, which describes a situation that has already moved and a base that no longer quite matches the current quarter.
Above all, the next question reopens the cycle. “And by entity?”, “and excluding freight?”, “and over twelve months?”: three natural refinements, three new extracts. The reconciliation work done during the engagement leaves with it, in a workbook nobody will be able to replay.
Then there is the question of scope. An engagement frames its analysis around what it can handle in the time available: three categories, two entities, eighteen months. That is an honest method, but it leaves out diffuse spend (the many small amounts, the recurring services with no purchase order), which is precisely where off-contract spend settles.
What each side brings
Saying what a consulting firm brings and we do not is an argument, not a confession. An acknowledged boundary beats a vague promise.
What a consulting firm brings, and we do not
- Market data: indices, commodity prices, sector benchmarks. We do not sell market data: we make yours queryable.
- Knowledge of how other organisations operate, which only someone who has seen them can carry.
- An outside view of the organisation itself: its trade-offs, its ordering habits, its comfort zones.
- The running of a transformation programme, with the mandate and the authority that come with it.
- The ability to negotiate on your behalf, when you choose to delegate the negotiation itself and not only the case behind it.
What we bring, and an engagement does not
- The answer the same day, as many times as needed. The next question does not reopen a six-week cycle.
- Completeness over the period: not a sample of categories, but the whole spend read line by line.
- Evidence under every figure: the lines that make it up, then the document each line came from. A challenged figure is checked in the meeting.
- Permanence. The query becomes a dashboard, replayable next month on the same rules: the knowledge does not leave with the engagement.
- Traceability of method: the calculation rules are shown and stay the same from one month to the next. Two people asking the same question get the same figure.
The two approaches do not exclude each other. An engagement that starts on figures already reconciled, sourced line by line and replayable no longer spends its first three weeks rebuilding the spend base: it works on strategy immediately.
“We do not have a data team”
The delay between the question and the answer. A buyer preparing a renegotiation no longer waits for a slot with the data team.
That is precisely the use case. The question is asked in plain language, not in SQL. Nobody needs to know the data model, to write a query, or to wait for a slot: you write the question the way you would have asked an analyst, and Insight translates it into a query over the graph.
- Whatever is not known is declared as such: a missing figure returns “I do not have that information”, never an estimate.
- Because the relationships in the graph are explicit, the joins are exact. The answer is not built on a similarity of wording.
- The analysis investigates the case, it does not decide. The choice of supplier, of renegotiation or of scope stays a team decision.
- Completeness: diffuse spend is handled like the rest, because there is no marginal cost to including it in the scope.
Read only
Insight reads, it does not write. No writing into the ERP (enterprise resource planning system), no commitment made, no data sent outside: your documents and your analyses stay in your environment, hosted in France, and are never used to train a model.
What Zylio does not do
Procurement intelligence · Insight
Ask the question. It builds the analysis, and shows where every figure comes from.
Translates a question asked in plain language into a query over the graph and the procurement database, computes, and returns the useful form: a figure, a table, a curve, a dashboard. It reads, it does not write. Every value opens onto the lines that make it up, and every line onto its source document.
The delay between the question and the answer. A buyer preparing a renegotiation no longer waits for a slot with the data team.
What Insight detects
- A category whose price has been drifting for months
- A contract coverage rate falling, by category and by entity
- Credit notes outstanding, with whom and for how long
- A single-source reference with no alternative on record
- A gap between the budget for a cost line and what was actually invoiced
- An increase driven by mix or volume rather than price
- A missing figure: declared as missing, never estimated
Nothing is lost. Everything can be checked, everything can be proven.
- The contract clause and the invoice line, highlighted side by side.
- Every extracted value stays linked to the exact place in the document where it was read.
- The same case produces the same decision, today as in six months: the rules are applied deterministically.
- No discrepancy is set aside in silence. Anything that matches no rule is raised, with its reason.
- The agent records what it did, in the order it did it: who, what, how much, when.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need a data team to use Insight?
No, and that is precisely the use case. The question is asked in plain language, not in SQL. Nobody needs to know the data model or to wait for a slot: you write the question the way you would ask an analyst, and Insight translates it into a query over the graph and the procurement database.
Does Zylio replace a procurement consulting firm?
No. We do not sell market data, and we bring neither sector benchmarks nor an outside view of your organisation. We make your own data queryable and verifiable. The two combine well: an engagement that starts from figures already sourced does not spend its first weeks rebuilding the spend base.
How do I check a Zylio conclusion?
Every discrepancy opens onto its evidence: the contract clause and the invoice line, highlighted side by side, with the calculation shown.
Can Zylio trigger a payment or contact a supplier?
No, never without your approval. Zylio prepares the case file; the commitment stays human.
Measurable impact in every environment
More than 5 million procurement documents analysed
Between 1 and 7% of margin recovered
on the scope analysed
From 15 to 45% of time given back to teams, per FTE
depending on the scope and on data maturity
Zylio fits into your existing ecosystem.
The ERP runs the process. Zylio handles the exception and recovers the value that escapes it: invoices without a purchase order, line-by-line price discrepancies, duplicates and overbilling, off-contract spend.
Your data under high security.
Zylio meets the most demanding standards, and nothing is committed without your approval.
- Certifications
- Hosting
- Encryption
- Access
Read next
- Procurement intelligenceInsight: on-demand procurement analysis, verifiable figure by figure.
- The questions to ask about your procurementThe twelve real questions, and what has to be connected to answer them.
- Connect your procurement data to Power BIThe clean datasets your reporting tool already knows how to consume.
- The contract coverage rateHow much of your spend is genuinely governed by a contract.
- Price-volume-mix analysisIsolating the price, volume and mix effects behind an increase.
See what this looks like on your own data
Twenty minutes, on a spend category of your choosing. We show you what the agents detect, with the evidence behind it.
- No commitment, on your own data
- Result in 3 weeks
- 20 minutes, no sales pitch
- Your data stays hosted in France
- No change of tool or process