Scoping a cost reduction programme
Builds a sized pipeline of potential savings linked to specific cost reduction levers. Confidence levels and effort estimates help teams judge which opportunities warrant attention.
— Finance & Investment
Cost Base Review
Aggregates a spend extract by category and supplier, exposes concentration, scores each material line for reducibility, and sizes a savings pipeline with the lever, confidence and effort per opportunity.
- Finance & Investment
- Traceable reasoning
- Runs anywhere
2–3 weeks → ~40 minutes
For a full population, not a sample
No coding required
- Input
- Spend extracts with transaction, supplier or cost-level amounts
- Output
- Cost base diagnostic report
- Runs in
- Skillsize · ChatGPT · Claude · Copilot
- Export
- SKILL.md · MCP
- Time saved
- ~2–3 weeks per run
— USE CASES
What people use Cost Base Review for
Understanding supplier spend concentration
Highlights where spending is concentrated among suppliers and categories. Provides a clearer basis for examining purchasing patterns and potential commercial leverage.
Investigating unusual spending patterns
Identifies anomalies and material cost drivers within the available spend data. Focuses the diagnostic on areas that merit explanation or closer scrutiny.
Supporting leadership cost discussions
Provides a structured report that connects the cost base to potential reductions. Makes the estimated scale, confidence and effort of each opportunity visible without presenting potential savings as guaranteed.
What it works from
- Spend extracts with transaction, supplier or cost-level amounts
- Category and supplier classifications
- Cost centre allocations and other available spend dimensions
What you get back
- Cost base diagnostic report
- Category and supplier spend breakdowns
- Spend concentration and anomaly findings
- Assessment of cost reduction potential across material spending areas labelled by category, supplier or cost centre where available and relevant to the source data and review scope
— HOW IT BEHAVES
How Cost Base Review produces its result
The mechanics behind this specific template — what it reads, what it calculates, and where a human stays in the loop.
Every row of the reporting period in scope
Each row of your export is processed on the same basis, so no line item is skipped however long the table is.
The pattern charted
Movement across the reporting period in scope is visualised from the computed data, so the trend is legible at a glance.
Composed as work product
Findings on the reporting period in scope are written up as a document that reads like professional output, with each claim tied back to a line item.
Each line item enriched in place
Derived columns are added row by row, keeping your source data and the judgement about each line item side by side.
Roll-up alongside line item-level detail
Detail rows are summarised into the grouped view of the reporting period in scope without losing the underlying line items.
Why this is expensive by hand
Cost base reviews often leave advisory teams reconciling fragmented spend data while trying to distinguish genuine savings opportunities from costs that are difficult to change. Scoping a cost reduction programme is the typical trigger — builds a sized pipeline of potential savings linked to specific cost reduction levers. Confidence levels and effort estimates help teams judge which opportunities warrant attention. Done properly it is defensible; done at pace it becomes a judgement call nobody can retrace. And "properly" usually means 2–3 weeks of manual work.
How this Skill produces it
As a Skill, the work is already sequenced. You bring the evidence, and the run produces cost base diagnostic report plus category and supplier spend breakdowns. The judgement is built in — how items are broken up, what standard they are held to, and where the run stops for a human review. Net effect: 2–3 weeks down to ~40 minutes, no drift between runs, and every conclusion traceable back to the evidence behind it.
Who it's for
- Finance directors and FP&A teams
- Investment, deal and corporate development teams
- Controllers and reporting managers
- Consultants building or reviewing business cases
Run it in Skillsize — or export it anywhere
Cost Base Review exports as a structured SKILL.md file and is MCP-ready, so the same method runs in ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or your own AI products. Adapt it to your methodology, and the intelligence stays yours — not locked to one vendor.
ChatGPTClaudeCopilotAI Products (MCP)
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