Page 1 of 6 Source: Booz & Company Page 1 Widgets Cost Modeling Case Study Cynthia was impressed. As she thumbed through the pages of tables and spreadsheets spread all over her desk, she realized her team had done a tremendous job in collecting the supplier information she had charged them with just two weeks ago. She knew that the backbone of performing cost modeling was accurate and complete data. The question she had now was how to take the mass of data and use it to make decisions for her and the purchasing group to reduce total costs to the company. It all seemed straight-forward enough several weeks ago in the training course she and her team had participated in. She understood that cost modeling was all about understanding the drivers of suppliers costs and then engaging in a cooperative arrangement with a reduced number of suppliers to save costs, and thus capture benefits, for both parties. But which data told her what the right answer was? As one of the managers in the Purchasing organization, Cynthia had been tasked with developing a Strategic Sourcing Plan on one of their commodities, widgets, as part of an overall Sourcing