
Infor Loses Bruce Richardson and Still Lacks a Competency in Procurement
Former AMR Research executive Bruce Richardson, one of the most pragmatic, fun and approachable personalities in the supply chain business, made a big splash when he went to Infor to take an executive strategy role less than two y…

Deal Architect joins Constellation Research Group
Effective today, my consulting firm Deal Architect is now a member of the Constellation Research Group. We will continue to deliver services under the Deal Architect banner, but in addition, we will now be able to leverage the resources of this brand-new membership research organization and extend our services to its clients. What is Constellation […]

Spend Visibility and Beyond — Analytics Broader Role in Procurement and Supply Chain
Today marks an important milestone in Spend Matters’ relatively brief history. We?re launching our second Compass research series. We?ve designed Spend Matters Compass briefs to deliver high quality and insightful research at a level that goes deeper…

Gartner’s Strategic Sourcing Magic Quadrant: Clarifying a Few Questions
On Tuesday, I got a number of questions from colleagues about Gartner’s Strategic Sourcing Magic Quadrant or “MarketScope”, as they’ve come to also call these types of 2/2 analyses. One question that kept coming up again and again was why Oracle was …

Gartner’s Strategic Sourcing Magic Quadrant: We Report, You Read and We All Decide
I usually have a more op/ed than reporting take on analyzing the news, but I thought I’d use this post to highlight some of the findings of Gartner’s latest Strategic Sourcing Magic Quadrant, authored by Debbie Wilson, to kick off the inevitable comm…

Spend Hydroplaning — Purchasing Magazine Skims the Surface of Spend Analysis (Part 1)
A recent Purchasing article on what $100K buys in spend analysis has already had some rotten tomatoes hurled at it by an irate blogger. In his response to the article, Michael Lamoureux, who posts as “The Doctor,” gets only one of his criticisms wro…

Coupa and Ariba — Analyzing Comparative Claims (Part 2)
Today, we’ll continue our analysis of whether Coupa’s claims against Ariba hold up under scrutiny, taking an objective look at marketing versus reality. Let’s begin with the core buying process. When it comes to requisitioning, Coupa claims an “Amazo…

Friday Rant: The Changing Analyst Tide — Turning to Consultants and SIs For Advice
Without question, we can all agree that there’s been much ado of
late about Gartner, AMR Research, and the whole industry-analyst
business model (I confess to adding some fuel to the fire in this
discussion). But perhaps the most important o…

Should Practitioners Pay for Both Gartner and AMR Separately?
There’s been quite a lot of chatter lately about whether
vendors and services providers should renew separately with both
Gartner and AMR Research now that the two firms are one. However, perhaps the more important question to ponder first is h…

Should Vendors Should Pay for Both Gartner and AMR?
It’s the first day back to work for most of us after at least a few days off, and while I’m sure many of you are raring to get back into action, some of you in an analyst-renewal period face a number of added cycles thanks to the recent Gartner and A…