With the announcement of powerful, social network-oriented updates will critical mainstream pundits finally see WhyAbe as something more than a small offering from a boutique firm?

New enhancements benefit both the buying community and the suppliers that service them.  The free site just added new ways for its users to benefit from registering. Buyers may now increase the exposure of their event by sharing it via social media links plugins to sites like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and more.  Suppliers can use those same tools to promote their new public profiles, as well as make the world aware of the catalog.  The new supplier catalog feature allows suppliers to showcase products and services that they sell, providing descriptive information, pricing, hyperlinks and photos. Buyers can explore supplier catalogs and profiles and save the supplier’s contact information in order to later invite them to an RFP or Reverse Auction event.

Press Release excerpt highlighting enhancements to WhyAbe.com e-sourcing tool

In my December 1st, 2011 post titled “Blinded by familiarity, Jason Busch gets called out by a vendor for missing the mark,” I had made reference to a post by William Dorn in the Strategic Sourceror blog which was critical of Busch’s dismissive commentary regarding the WhyAbe.com free e-sourcing website.

Specifically, Dorn took exception to the fact that Busch credited Ariba with being the first vendor to provide an e-sourcing platform when, in reality, it was the WhyAbe.com platform that first appeared on the scene.  Dorn even went so far as to refer to a Spend Matters post that Busch had previously written acknowledging this fact.

When faced with the obvious contradiction, Busch fell back on a familiar pattern of dismissing contentious or conflicting fact with a cavalier indifference referring to WhyAbe.com as little more than a “small offering from a boutique firm.”

Tantamount to my 3 year old who by covering his eyes believes that if he can’t see me, then I can’t see him, the persisting blind spot from the oligarchical old guard in which the chumminess of what was and still for the most part is a closed community, is equally amusing.

Jason Busch assessing the market.

For example, and in his championing of Ariba as the original free e-sourcing innovator, Busch fails to mention that he spent 5 years leading the branding and market strategy for FreeMarkets, a company that was purchased by Ariba in 2004 for $493 million.  Hmmmm . . .

The fact remains that purported industry pundits with extensive expertise have perhaps by choice confined their understanding of the market to both the comfortable and familiar relationships that, similar to the glory days of the famous Rat Pack, have come and are now long gone.

Like an Al Bundy reminiscing about how, back in high school, he scored 4 touchdowns in one game, the current day assessments by these individuals have very little relevance in the context of the emerging virtual realms of Internet-based procurement practices, let alone the needs of the industry itself.  Or has one commenter on the Strategic Sourceror blog post put it;

” I think the viewpoints on the Spend Matters posts need to come down a peg or two to be more in tune with your average purchasing professional, who won’t be waking up every morning to conduct ‘bid optimisation’ and ‘expressive bidding’ projects but will be more focused on just doing the job well in an easy and effective way.”

This means that it should be interesting to see how the Jason Busch’s of the industry respond to WhyAbe.com innovations, such as buyers now being able to share their events via social media links plugins.

In the meantime, I would strongly suggest that you check out the enhancements that were just announced for the WhyAbe.com platform for yourself, and ultimately reach your own conclusions as to it viability for your enterprise.  In the end this latter point is really the only consideration that matters.

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