Solutions · Private equity
How PE operating teams can scan procurement opportunities across portfolio companies
A private equity operating team can scan procurement across its portfolio by running the same diagnostic on an accounts-payable export from each company. No source-to-pay system is needed at any of them. ValueChaser turns each export into a categorized spend cube and a sized savings assessment in the same structure for each company, so results can be compared across the portfolio.
ValueChaser is not a portfolio-management, PMO or source-to-pay platform. It is the diagnostic layer that turns financial and procurement data into quantified value-creation opportunities.
Analysis is generated in minutes, with completed client diagnostics available within 24 hours.
What each portfolio company provides
- One AP or spend export in Excel, CSV or another tabular format, with one row per transaction line.
- A supplier name, an amount and an indication of what was bought on each line.
- A twelve month sample is enough to start. 12 to 36 months is the recommended window.
Nothing is installed at the portfolio company. There is no integration with its ERP and no change to its procurement process.
How the scan works
- Collect one export per company. The finance team at each portfolio company exports AP or spend lines from the system it already uses.
- Categorize each file to one taxonomy. Procurement Categorization normalizes supplier names and classifies each line to UNSPSC or the ValueChaser industry taxonomy, so categories mean the same thing at each company.
- Run the savings assessment per company. Procurement Insights measures concentration and fragmentation by category and supplier, identifies tail spend and consolidation targets, and sizes savings on a realism ladder: immediate, negotiation-driven and structural.
- Compare across the portfolio. Each company receives the same report structure, a Procurement Health Score across six dimensions and a savings range by category. The operating team applies its own judgment on top.
- Triage. Use the sized opportunity to decide which companies merit a deeper procurement workstream before committing to one.
What the operating team receives for each company
| Output | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Categorized spend dataset | Each transaction with category, normalized supplier, classification method and confidence |
| Procurement Health Score | A score out of 100 across six dimensions |
| Savings opportunity analysis | Savings ranges by category, with the calculation basis |
| Supplier consolidation view | Concentration by category, single-source flags and consolidation targets |
| Negotiation playbooks | Category-specific preparation for supplier discussions |
| Excel savings model | Editable model the deal or operating team can extend |
When the available data is limited
In diligence, an AP extract may not be available yet. A company diagnostic can run on a 10-K, an annual report or audited financial statements and gives a peer-benchmarked financial baseline with a 100-day action plan. The procurement scan follows once transaction data can be shared.
A quantified example
EU utilities, materials procurement (anonymized). From a raw AP extract of 20,000 transactions covering €6.54B of spend and 108 suppliers, the analysis identified 35 category-level savings levers and €392M to €654M in annualized savings, 11.1% of addressable spend, with a Procurement Health Score of 66/100.
How teams start
The first analysis on one portfolio company is complimentary. The team submits the free run request, signs an NDA by e-signature and uploads the data to a private folder. Our team prepares the data, the platform builds the analysis and our team quality checks the output. The PDF report, Excel model and CSV dataset are delivered within 24 hours, with a 20 minute review. Each report after that costs $900.
When this is the wrong tool
ValueChaser does not track initiatives, owners or milestones, and it does not monitor portfolio KPIs over time. Use it alongside your value-creation-plan or portfolio-monitoring tool: ValueChaser produces the diagnostic, and those tools track the plan.
Frequently asked questions
Do portfolio companies need a source-to-pay system for this?
No. The scan runs on an AP or spend export from the system each company already uses.
Is the diagnostic the same at each company?
Yes. The same analytical structure runs on each company's data, and the calculations are deterministic, so results can be compared across the portfolio.
How long does a scan take?
Analysis is generated in minutes, with completed client diagnostics available within 24 hours. Run it yourself and the report arrives in minutes. When our team runs your data for you, the completed diagnostic is delivered within 24 hours.
What happens to the portfolio company's data?
The data is used to produce the analysis and for nothing else. ValueChaser does not train models on client data. More detail is on the data security page.
What does it cost?
$900 per report, with the first portfolio company complimentary. A monthly unlimited plan is available on an annual agreement. See pricing.
Related
- PE portfolio diagnostics with ValueChaser
- How to identify procurement savings opportunities from AP spend data
- How to build a procurement spend cube without a new S2P platform
- Spend-to-savings diagnostic with Procurement Insights
