Travel Tuesday: The End of Business Class and Other Tales — Is Corporate Travel Changing for Good?
A fundamental challenge of indirect and services procurement is that we?re often asked to make sourcing decisions — not to mention negotiating with and managing suppliers — based on historic data that may or may not reflect future demands and requi…
Taking Back Control of Professional Services and IT Spend
Over the weekend, my wife shared with me that one of her high-school friends was interviewing for a category/vendor-management position focused on professional services and IT spend. The job would report up to the CPO of the organization (rather than…
Friday Rant — Procurement Outsourcing: Fersht’s Anemic Sourcing Horse? (Part 1)
Capgemini’s recently announced acquisition of IBX got me thinking this week about what it will take for procurement outsourcing to go mainstream. Fortunately, the timing of my analysis (not to mention the deal timing) could not have been better, as i…
Services Spend Watch: Two Quick Tips For Getting the Most From Your MSP
I’ve been doing a significant amount of research of late in
preparation for an upcoming deep-dive series on the services
procurement market (more on this tomorrow). My research had me speaking with dozens of practitioners, VMS providers, and …
2010 Prediction: Demand for Sourcing and Supply Chain Consulting Strikes Back
Earlier in January, I offered up twelve predictions for 2010 and said that I’d tackle them in more detail in the coming weeks. The first on my list is one that I’ve been thinking about extensively over the last few months, and gathering facts to supp…
Ariba, Wipro, and the Consultant/Channel Game (Part 2)
In the first post in this series, I provided an explanation of the different channel engagement models in the Spend
Management sector, as well as their historical context. In the second part of this column I’ll zero in on
Ariba and how it has m…
Friday Rant: Will Services Procurement Get Eaten by Talent Management?
Earlier in the week, Authoria, a talent management vendor, announced it was merging with
Peopleclick, a VMS provider (which also happened to have
significant capability in other human capital management / talent management
technology areas)….
SAP Influencer Summit, Dispatch 4: The SAP Procurement Portfolio (Part 1)
Even though I’ve written at length about SAP’s procurement portfolio
earlier this year, paying particular attention to recent developments
in the P2P (i.e., SRM) and E-Sourcing arenas, I thought it
worth spending a few posts providing an upd…
e-Three: Proof of the Commoditization of High-Quality, Low-Cost E-Sourcing
When I first got a peek inside a full service e-sourcing process in
the late nineties, I quickly realized that, despite all the posturing
and spin behind how FreeMarkets and others positioned it, the
process was really more science than art….
FieldGlass Doubles Down on BI and Contingent Spend (Part 2)
In my first column tackling the latest from Chicago-based VMS provider Fieldglass last week, I provided an overview of a number of the gaps they recently filled from a reporting, analytics, visualization and benchmarking perspective in their solution…
