CLEANSE

CLEANSE is the second step towards actionable intelligence

CLEANSE is the second key step in the process of transforming your spend and vendor data into actionable intelligence that is complete, accurate and fit-for-purpose.

Removing duplicates, identifying and fixing errors

The validated data extract is processed using Sequence - a critical component of our process management infrastructure - to standardize the data, remove duplicates, identify and fix errors and prepare the file for subsequent processing. We routinely trap hundreds of common data errors in raw data extracts uploaded for processing – unresolved these errors would result in analysis that is inaccurate and potentially misleading.

Standardizing vendor names

We invest considerable time and effort in the creation and management of master vendor records where we have "normalized" the vendor's trading name. A lack of standard naming conventions in the public sector makes it very difficult to identify common vendors across multiple organizations. The vendor master file in the Observatory contributes to overcoming this challenge; no matter what name you use to refer to a vendor in your financial management systems, we're able to effect a match and, where appropriate, use the normalized vendor name in subsequent analysis.