Run a real category strategy, not a slide about one, using Claude Code to automate every step from Kraljic positioning to QBR-ready reporting
For category managers and procurement analysts who want to build working automation pipelines, without writing a line of code from scratch, and add a capability set hiring managers actively seek.
11 chapters, 9 lessons
9
lessons, yours to run
Easy to pick up, built to get you the next job
No coding background needed, and you write code with Claude as you go.
Every section below turns into something a hiring manager recognises, not just notes.
Position every category on the Kraljic matrix automatically
- You will wire Claude Code to your Excel spend workbook via an MCP server so it reads all 40 categories directly, no copy-paste, no truncation
- You will run three parallel scoring agents: a Kraljic scorer, a supplier risk assessor, and a market signal checker, each returning clean JSON results
- You will add validation hooks that catch quadrant misclassifications before they reach your stakeholders
- You will trigger the entire matrix refresh with a single slash command, a capability any category management job spec would recognise as automation-ready
Build TCO and should-cost models that hold up in a negotiation room
- You will compute true total cost of ownership by pulling all cost dimensions from your workbook, not just unit price
- You will build a should-cost model grounded in your own spend data, ready to defend line by line across the table from a supplier
- No prior coding experience is needed: each recipe walks you through the exact prompt and file structure, step by step
Run the operating rhythm that finance and the business actually believe
- You will build a savings pipeline your finance team can validate, pulling from a live workbook rather than a manually updated slide
- You will surface demand consolidation opportunities across your category by automating the analysis rather than doing it by hand each quarter
- These are the outputs a senior category manager is expected to own, and you will be able to produce them faster and with more rigour than peers doing it manually
Automate supplier base rationalisation and commodity alerts
- You will rationalise your supplier base by running automated analysis against your supplier and spend data, identifying consolidation candidates systematically
- You will set up automated commodity alerts that flag market signals relevant to your categories without you having to check manually
- Every artifact you build runs on your local machine: your Excel files never leave your drive, which matters when your data is commercially sensitive
Generate a category council QBR that builds itself
- You will compose a full end-to-end pipeline that takes live workbook data and outputs a QBR-ready category council pack
- You will use slash commands and agent composition so any team member can regenerate the pack from updated data with one command
- This is the kind of repeatable, auditable process a hiring manager or CPO recognises as genuine procurement automation, not a one-off analysis
Finish this course and you can do all of this, no prior background required:
- You will be able to automate the quarterly Kraljic matrix refresh from a live Excel workbook using MCP, subagents, and slash commands, a reproducible process any CPO can see and trust
- You will be able to build a should-cost model grounded in your own spend and market intelligence data and defend every line of it in a supplier negotiation
- You will be able to produce a savings pipeline that finance can validate, because the logic is transparent and runs from the same source data every time
- You will be able to identify demand consolidation opportunities and supplier rationalisation candidates through automated analysis rather than manual cross-referencing
- You will be able to set up commodity alert automation that flags relevant market signals for your categories without manual monitoring
- You will be able to generate a category council QBR pack that rebuilds itself from updated data with a single command, making you the person the team relies on for the quarterly rhythm
9 lessons, 11 chapters
Built by practitioners, not influencers
Every agent, skill file, and dataset is drawn from 25+ years and 50+ Oracle ERP implementations across pharma, manufacturing, semiconductor, and distribution.
Kept current with the stack
Claude Code, skills, and MCP move fast. Your licence includes every system update for as long as you're subscribed. Your system gets better, not obsolete.
Most category managers still run their Kraljic refresh the same way they did five years ago: copy spend rows into a spreadsheet, manually score risk and profit impact, paste the quadrant outputs into a PowerPoint, and repeat the whole exercise next quarter from scratch. Every time the data changes, the slide is wrong. Finance pushes back on the savings pipeline because they cannot see how the numbers were built. The should-cost model lives in one analyst's head and falls apart the moment a supplier challenges an assumption. And when a hiring manager asks whether you can automate category analysis, the honest answer is no, which is why that job goes to someone else.
What you'll be able to do, module by module
Every module leaves you able to build and run something real. Here is the syllabus, in the order you work through it.
Curriculum
11 chapters · 9 lessons
Advanced Procurement Category Analysis Cook Book using Claude Code
You will be able to build and run a fully automated category strategy pipeline: positioning all categories on the Kraljic matrix from live Excel data, computing TCO and should-cost models, generating a validated savings pipeline, surfacing demand consolidation and supplier rationalisation opportunit
Data Files1 item
- Data Files🔒
Building Your Category Strategy Foundation0 items
Positioning Every Category on the Kraljic Matrix1 item
- Positioning Every Category on the Kraljic Matrix🔒
Computing True Total Cost of Ownership1 item
- Computing True Total Cost of Ownership🔒
Managing Your Savings Pipeline1 item
- Managing Your Savings Pipeline🔒
Closing the Savings Credibility Gap1 item
- Closing the Savings Credibility Gap🔒
Surfacing Demand Consolidation Opportunities1 item
- Surfacing Demand Consolidation Opportunities🔒
Rationalizing Your Supplier Base1 item
- Rationalizing Your Supplier Base🔒
Building Should-Cost Models That Win Negotiations1 item
- Building Should-Cost Models That Win Negotiations🔒
Monitoring Commodity Markets with Automated Alerts1 item
- Monitoring Commodity Markets with Automated Alerts🔒
Automating the Category Council QBR0 items
Most candidates can describe the Kraljic matrix. Very few can show a hiring manager a working pipeline that automates it from a live Excel workbook, validates the outputs, and rebuilds the QBR pack on demand. Stacking these recipes makes you the operator who can do both, and that combination is rare enough to change which shortlist your CV lands on.
From subscribing to running your first artifact
Subscribe and get instant access
As soon as you subscribe you get access to all ten recipes, the four source data files, and the worked Excel workbook. No waiting for a cohort start date. Open the course on any device and you are in the materials immediately.
Open the course and follow the first recipe
Start with the Kraljic matrix automation lesson. Every step is written out in plain English with the exact prompt to type into Claude Code. You install the MCP filesystem server, point it at your data folder, and confirm Claude can read your workbook, all in the first session. No coding background assumed, no syntax to memorise.
Build and run your first working pipeline
By the end of the Kraljic chapter you have a real working artifact: a slash command that reads your Excel workbook, runs three scoring agents in parallel, validates the quadrant outputs, and returns a formatted Kraljic matrix. That artifact is yours to keep, adapt, and demo in an interview or show to your CPO.
Automating the quarterly Kraljic refresh for a manufacturing category portfolio
Connect Claude Code to the spend workbook
You install the MCP filesystem server and configure settings.json to point at your ./Data/ folder. Claude can now read all four sheets of the category workbook directly. You confirm it by asking Claude to list the files and report row counts. No copy-pasting, no truncation at 200 rows.
Run three scoring agents in parallel
You invoke the /generate-kraljic command. Claude spawns three subagents simultaneously: the kraljic-scorer reads risk and profit impact scores for each of the 40 categories, the supplier-risk-assessor checks supplier concentration and single-source flags, and the market-signal-checker pulls commodity volatility indicators from the Market_Intel sheet. Each agent returns compact JSON. The main agent never has to wade through raw rows.
Validation hooks catch misclassifications before output
Before the matrix is written back to the workbook, the validation hooks compare each computed quadrant against the previously recorded quadrant in the Categories sheet. Any category where the computed result disagrees with the stored classification is flagged for your review. Steel Coil, Enterprise Licenses, and CNC Machinery all confirm as Strategic. One packaging category that had been manually filed as Leverage is flagged as a likely Bottleneck based on updated risk scores.
Results write back to the workbook and the QBR builds itself
The pipeline writes the updated quadrant classifications back to a new sheet in kraljic_workbook.xlsx, logs the misclassification flag with a justification note, and then passes the validated matrix to the QBR composition step. The category council pack is generated from the live data, not a manually updated slide. You run the whole pipeline again next quarter with one command and the output reflects whatever has changed in the workbook.
The toolkit you'll build and run in this program
You leave with working assets, not notes.
Real things you can demo in an interview.
A working MCP-connected Excel pipeline that reads and writes your category workbook directly, reusable across any category refresh
Three authored subagent files: kraljic-scorer, supplier-risk-assessor, and market-signal-checker, ready to run in parallel on your own data
A library of slash commands including /kraljic-matrix, /quadrant-strategy, /portfolio-heatmap, and /generate-kraljic that any team member can run
Validation hooks that catch Kraljic quadrant misclassifications before output reaches stakeholders
A should-cost model template and TCO calculation recipe grounded in the course data files, portable to your live categories
A self-building category council QBR artifact you can demo as a portfolio piece or present directly to your leadership team
You'll get the most from this if
Category managers running a live category strategy who need to automate the quarterly Kraljic refresh, savings pipeline, and QBR rather than rebuild them manually each time
Procurement analysts who want to add tangible automation skills to their CV and be able to demo working pipelines in interviews
Supply chain professionals whose spend data lives in Excel workbooks and who want Claude Code to work directly with those files without cloud upload or data exposure risk
Procurement students and early-career buyers who want to move beyond theoretical frameworks and show hiring managers they can build the tools as well as understand the methodology
Yearly plan: 14-day keep-the-system guarantee
14-day refund on the yearly plan. Finish the first two modules, and if you haven't run your first live pipeline, take a full refund.
Straight answers before you subscribe
Do I need any coding experience or a technical background to do this course?
None at all. Every recipe gives you the exact prompt to type into Claude Code and walks through each configuration step in plain English. The course is designed for procurement and category management practitioners, not developers. If you can open a terminal and follow written instructions, you have everything you need. The first lesson gets you to a working MCP connection in a single session.
Will this work with my own spend data and Excel files, or only with the course data?
The course ships with four source CSVs and a worked Excel workbook so you can follow every recipe exactly as written. Once you have built each artifact on the course data, adapting it to your own workbook is a matter of pointing the MCP server at your folder and adjusting column names. The recipes are designed to be portable, not locked to one dataset.
What is the refund policy if the course is not right for me?
There is a 14-day refund window. If you work through the material and decide it is not a fit, you can request a full refund within 14 days of purchase. We would rather you make the right call for your situation than feel stuck with something that does not serve you.
How does the course stay current as Claude Code and MCP evolve?
Updates are included. When the tooling changes in ways that affect the recipes, the course materials are revised and you get access to the updated versions automatically. The daily live sessions and mentor review also mean you have a channel to ask about anything that has shifted since you last ran a recipe.
Can I use the artifacts I build, including the agents and slash commands, in my actual job or for client work?
Yes. Everything you build during the course is yours. The agents, slash commands, hooks, and pipeline compositions run locally on your machine and are not subject to any licence restriction that would prevent commercial use. Use them in your own category strategy work, adapt them for your team, or include them in a portfolio demo for a job application.