Getting a right customised product and service classification for your own company is a tuff and time consuming job. You’d rather start with and leverage a standard and global one as the UNSPSC, available in several languages and evolving with user’s requirements. It’s already quite extensive with several thousand codes.
The United Nations Standard Products and Services Code® (UNSPSC®) provides an open, global multi-sector standard classification for efficiency and accuracy. Search the code on this website to locate commodity codes that can be used by your company. The UNSPSC offers a single global and standard classification system that can be used for:
- Company-wide visibility of spend analysis
- Cost-effective procurement optimization
- Full exploitation of electronic commerce capabilities
To know more about UNSPSC or download a classification just go to https://www.unspsc.org, the official UNSPSC website.
You can also download an excel version of the 4 level (segment, family, class, commodity) UNSPSC classification. Be aware it is a 3MB file.
You will find as well on https://www.unspsc.org/ very interesting papers and case studies related to spend management, eSourcing and eProcurement as follow:
- UNSPSC Tool Kit from GS1 Healthcare
- Aberdeen’s Spend Analysis Benchmark: Working Too Hard for the Money
- Enterprise Data Record Level Semantic Model of Enterprise Content
- Leveraging the Power of UNSPSC for Business Intelligence
- Spend Visibilty: A Guide to Effective Program Design
- Spend Management Visibility 101
- Hospital Supply Chain Savings
- Why Coding and Classifying Products is Critical to Success in Electronic Commerce (White Paper October 2001)
- Strategic Sourcing and e-Procurement — Which One, or Both?
- Best Practices in Spending Analysis — Cure for a Corporate Epidemic
- UNSPSC For Better Spend Analysis September 2006
- A UNSPSC Success Story…Mercy Ships
- A UNSPSC Success Story…Ministry Health Care
- A UNSPSC Success Story…University Health Care System
- UNSPSC Newsletter – February 2014
- UNSPSC Codeset Version 16- Press Release- March 4, 2014
- UNSPSC Newsletter – February 2015
- UNSPSC Road Map – 2015-2016
- UNSPSC NEHTA Position Paper
- Using e-commerce data to manage product admission at international borders
- Leveraging e-commerce product data or smarter cargo management
Hi there,
I have just downloaded the excel version of the UNSPSC classification. Please can you tell me what version it is?
Many thanks
James
Sorry James, I didn’t trace the version.
You can however find latest versions in xls format here: .
Not free though: US$ 50
Thanks Bertrand for your extensive and valuable comment.
To make a long story short, I would say we are aligned on the fact that there’s not -yet- an ideal solution and that you are right in your approach and conclusion.
If I understand your POV and even fully agree with your remarks, I keep believing that a Public classification is better than a ‘private’ one, because – as you wrote – it will make it easier to go a step further and collaborate deeper with suppliers (eSourcing, eProcurement, VMI etc…). But this is just a question of perspective, as I am ‘extended enterprise’ centric while you are enterprise centric. Knowing you have already a private classification and that the ‘extended enterprise’ principle (plug and play) is not yet a reality, you are absolutly right to keep your private classification.
Hi,
I agree 100% on your list of benefits of having a classification of what you buy. It’s also a good way of sharing the same language within a company, especially critical for large & multinational companies.
But I don’t totally agree when you recommend to use the UNSPSC as an internal classification. Here are some of the reasons why I think an internal solution could, sometimes, be better and worth investigating. It’s open for discussion and I’d like to have your opinion on this matter.
At, my company, we have our own classification and we investigated using the UNSPC (or eClass or other “external standards”) instead. We identified a couple of reasons why these external standards are not “right” for us.
1st and foremost: too many updates (see link at the end). We use our own classification in our ERPs to capture our purchasing spend by commodities. Once a year, we usually update/modify our internal classification and this is a tremendous work for the teams and we’re fighting to get the updates done. So we don’t want to have to do that several times a year. Of course, we could use a version of UNSPSC and stick to it and never update our ERPs to a newer version, but then we would loose some of the benefits of using an external classification.
2nd reason: I found the UNSPSC too focus on the “what is it” question. In other words, to select the proper commodity or class for a part or service, you have to ask yourself a “what is it” question and I find it not so useful in some areas.
For example, how would you classify a turning or stamping parts? By its nature or by its function or by answering a “how is it made” type of question? I believe one of the benefits of having a classification is to identify “similar” parts/services across the company that you could source from the same supplier. We all know how consolidation our supply base and our needs is critical. Therefore, for some parts or services, I feel the question is not “what is it” but “how is it made”. Again, if you have a turning part or a stamping part, you need to know what is required to produce it so that you’re able to find potential suppliers.
In other areas, I think that it’s not the “what is it question” that is critical but the “what for” question. For example, consider a keyboard: this could be a PC keyboard classified as MRO or a keyboard you integrate in the product you manufacture. The “what for” question is sometimes critical from an accounting point of view (depreciation or no depreciation…)…
To go back to UNSPSC, I believe that a tremendous advantage of such a “public” classification (vs an internal” one) is when you want to share data & processes with suppliers. E-procurement catalogs are such an example. Building and maintaining the catalog is the supplier’s responsibility and it’s much easier and more efficient for them to use the UNSPSC.
Again, this is an open debate at my company and we’re keeping our internal classification but I believe that someday we’ll, again, look at other external solutions. Any additional thoughts?
Regards,
Bertrand
PS : When I was investigating if switching to an external classification like UNSPSC or eClass or eOTD was worth it, I found a very good article (you may already have it, but just in case…). Here’s the link :
http://www.dip.semanticweb.org/documents/Hepp2-et-al-A-Quantitative-Analysis-of-eClass-UNSPSC-eOTD-and-RNTD.pdf
AB Data Analyzers is a Data Service Provider, specifically in Classification, Cataloging or Value extraction and creating standardized Short and Long description for the product contents. Classification capabilities include classification by item, commodity, product and services based on classification schemas and content standards like UNSPSC and eOTD. Based on a description and a manufacture or supplier name and part number for the product, we abstract catalog including identification of the eOTD Standard Class Name, identification of all Properties and the addition of UNSPSC classification. Also provide classification services to classify the products and services to any proprietary schema provided by the customer, in any domains from Mechanical, Electrical, Electronics, Computer related products, Office and General Supplies