Over on Gartner Blogs, Debbie Wilson shared with her readers after Thanksgiving that “In between baking pies, eating turkey, watching hockey (go Monarchs!), playing tennis, and spending time with my family [that] first pass ratings are underway for the updated Magic Quadrant for Strategic Sourcing suites.” While I’m a huge fan of multitasking in the kitchen and in life, I’ve discovered that one of the major challenges of doing too many things at once is simply running out of space in the oven, not to mention hours in the day. But when it comes to how analyst firms often involve vendors — not to mention their references — in competitive comparisons like a Quadrant, there’s another angle to this as well. To wit: It’s not just your time as the reviewer that’s involved; it’s others’ as well. Which is why this particular quadrant analysis, whatever the results, will go down in my history as the most tainted and flawed piece of comparative research ever done in the space.
