The Smart Cube specializes in providing customized procurement and supply chain research to global corporations, management consulting firms and specialist procurement service providers. Our research capabilities cover all critical markets and extend across the globe – from North America and Western Europe to Low Cost Countries, including China, India and Eastern Europe.  In line with our emphasis on providing insight and not simply data, we integrate in-depth primary (telephone, email) and secondary research to help our clients answer critical questions such as:

• How is the market structured for the products and services I procure?
• What are current and emerging bases (countries) of supply?
• Who are the suppliers (known and unknown) who can service my category needs going forward?
• What practices are being deployed by other organizations to reduce direct and indirect spend costs?

Our core Strategic Sourcing Research services provide clients with the fundamental insights required to inform their procurement activities.  These include spend analysis and opportunity assessment research – working closely with the client to ‘crunch’ A/P data, analyzing/identifying trends and patterns to generate key buying insights – and  detailed supply market analyses – analyzing the nature and structure of category markets, demand and supply levers, etc.  Our capabilities also include supplier identification and pre qualification (or RFI studies) to identify suppliers across defined geographies (global, LCC, emerging markets) and screen them against client-specific criteria to generate a high quality RFP shortlist.

In addition to sourcing support, The Smart Cube also provides Ongoing Category Intelligence, such as category monitoring support (e.g. newsletters, category indexing and tracking) to not only develop the overall commodity profile, but also help track key trends, drivers, commodity movements, etc.  Category supply and demand drivers are another key offering whereby we track the major supply and demand drivers that impact a specific category, including recent deals, supplier consolidation, industry movements, etc.

Beyond these defined offerings, we at The Smart Cube conduct a wide range of Customized Topical Research designed to help procurement executives understand the critical, emerging issues of the day, ranging from the advent, nature and mechanics of buying consortia to the opportunities and pitfalls of Low Cost Country sourcing.

Secondary address:
180 W. Adams Street
Suite 701
Chicago, IL 60603
P: 312.880.1300
F: 312.268.5021
Email: usa@thesmartcube.com

Blog:
www.thesmartcube.com/insights/blog/

Year founded:
2003

Employees Worldwide:
110

Specialist Services:

• Supply Market analysis
• Supplier identification against custom criteria
• Supplier intelligence
• Low Cost Country supply market intelligence
• Spend analysis