Historically, there has been a gap between what procurement professionals consider to be “cost savings” and what executive management considers to be cost savings. You see, executive management uses standard financial statements as their “scorecard” for the business. Some procurement professionals have never made an effort to understand how financial statements work. Therefore, they have a difficult time reporting cost savings in a way that people using financial statements will consider legitimate. To define cost savings in a way that will be embraced by executive management, you need to communicate cost savings in a way that can be reconciled with data on the organization’s official financial statements using the “language of accounting.”