Ask a CFO or CPO how many suppliers the company has and which groups are the largest. Chances are the answer will be incorrect. Not because someone is not doing their job properly, but because the source data is messy. Think of duplicate suppliers, trade names that overlap, missing acquisitions, or outdated master data. As long as your supplier database has not been cleaned up and linked at group level, you are leaving money on the table and missing risks that you should have seen.
In this blog, you can read how trade information and corporate linkage help you consolidate your spend, streamline your supplier base, and secure better deals with less risk. No magic. No AI. Just data, structure, and discipline.
Interesting read: How to easily put together a supplier profile
Data foundation: without a unique key, everything is noise
Many organizations start their spend analysis in ERP or P2P. This is fine as a basis, but usually not sufficient to base strategic decisions on. You will then see that one group appears under multiple supplier codes, that trade names and old names are used interchangeably, that inactive suppliers are still included, and that different countries or business units have created their own variants.
The solution requires three steps. First, you match suppliers based on a unique identifier, such as a Chamber of Commerce, VAT, or D-U-N-S® number. Next, you add corporate linkage to clarify which entities belong to the same group and who the ultimate parent is. Finally, you clean up the data: duplicate entries are removed, inconsistencies are resolved, and suppliers that are no longer active are closed.
Only then can you answer the question that breaks everything open: What is our total spend with this group, worldwide?
Analysis: from individual suppliers to genuine supplier groups
As soon as you look at the group level, your perspective changes completely. Supplier X BV in city Y is no longer an independent party, but part of a larger group. This provides insights that you would never have seen otherwise. For example, you discover that your spend is fragmented across different entities of the same group, often in multiple countries and at varying rates. You also see that within a single category, you use multiple suppliers who actually deliver the same thing, due to local autonomy or historical choices. In addition, there is often a tail of small suppliers with minimal spend, but the same administrative burden.
By aggregating spend by group, category, and region, you can immediately see where your negotiating power lies, where consolidation makes sense, and where hidden risks are located, such as financial health, ESG issues, or sanction risks.
Action: where do the savings really come from?
The greatest value is created when you translate insights into actions.
Supplier rationalisation
Corporate linkage usually shows that you use multiple entities from the same group within a category or that different groups provide roughly the same services. The logical next step is to reduce the number of suppliers, bundle tail volume with strategic partners, and implement a clear intake policy whereby a new supplier replaces an existing one.
This results in lower internal management costs and higher volumes per supplier, leading to better rates and terms. Large organizations often save tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of euros per year, not to mention the economies of scale in price and service.
Corporate contracts en volume leverage
Once you know your total expenditure on a group, your negotiating position changes immediately. A local contract worth a few hundred thousand suddenly becomes a global expenditure of millions. This creates scope for group-wide framework agreements, volume discounts, uniform SLAs, and clear contract terms. In practice, this step alone yields three to five percent in additional savings.
Risk and compliance improvement
Corporate linkage is not only a procurement tool, but also an instrument for risk and compliance. At group level, you can better assess how financially healthy a group is, which ESG themes require attention, where sanctions or UBO risks lie, and how dependent you are on a single group. This helps prevent disruptions and strengthens your position vis-à-vis auditors, banks, and regulators.
In other words: you not only achieve savings, but also make your supply chain more mature and defensible.
Interesting read: How to stay ahead of risks as a procurement professional with insights from Altares Dun & Bradstreet
How do you get started in practical terms?
You don't have to organize a global “Big Bang” right away. It works better to start small. Choose one or two categories with significant spend, such as IT, facility, or marketing services. Match all suppliers in that category via an external data provider for unique IDs and linkage, and create a simple dashboard with spend per concern, the number of entities, and the number of countries or business units in which they occur.
Next, select the quick wins, such as concerns where spending is highly fragmented or tail suppliers that can easily be consolidated. Plan two or three renegotiations at concern level and measure the effect. If that works well, roll it out to other categories and embed it in your purchasing and risk process.
Corporate linkage is no longer a “nice to have”
Without trade information and corporate linkage, you are managing procurement based on a fragmented and partially inaccurate reality. You see individual pieces, but not the whole picture. With a solid data foundation, you know who you are really doing business with, you can see where your volume and risk are concentrated, and you can negotiate based on facts rather than assumptions.
And the great thing is: this is not a futuristic AI case. It can be done today with data and tools that are already available.
