As we think about the time we spend in our career, what we“leave behind” becomes more of a thought as our career ages. What will the person who takes our job overthink of the job we did? Will they admire the policies and procedures you put in place? Will the appreciate the talent you developed? Will they wonder how you got the savings you did – and if they can continue to grow the path?  Will they question suppliers picked and deals in place?

The one question that does not come up enough is what is the story of data you leave behind. I believe it has never been more important that the data you leave behind is better than when you found it. Simple things like your spend data – can you calculate the spend by category, business unit and supplier? Are you suppliers normalized so you can determine the total number you have?   Is your category information accurate fromLevel 1 to Level 3 (or 4)? Will a business unit CFO look at your data and agree with what is being budgeted?  

We must be creating data lakes with our spend, items, pricing, contracts, terms, scorecards, etc that allow future decision making togo faster and better than it did before. It is not an easy task. Many of us deal with disparate ERP systems, no catalog interfaces and lots of “free text” requisitioning. We must demand more of the tools we implement and our teams to not just put it all in Excel. We must demand standardization and accuracy versus human interaction to correct it.  We must demand our tools to be smarter and software providers to do better than just sell the deal. Consultants have to be pushed to do more than leave behind MS Powerpoint slides and talking points.  

Digitization will demand it as smarter tools need data to make faster, ML/AI driven decisions. These tools will not work if the data cannot be found.

Our legacy should be data.