Why Mickey North Rizza can’t go home again . . . or can she?

In Part 2 of yesterday’s post in which I wrote about Jason Busch’s proclamation that he is moving on regarding his “thinking,” I was posed with an interesting question.

If after spending years with a service provider, a journalist/analyst may lack the necessary objectivity to “effectively” cover the market, what are my thoughts if this scenario is reversed?  Specifically, what if a former journalist/analyst takes a position with a service provider?  Does this draw into question the validity of their assessment of the market in the years before their joining their new company?

Interesting thought, especially given the fact that one would not be unreasonable in assuming that there was at least indirectly a prior relationship that ultimately paved the way for the present position.

Let’s look at Mickey North Rizza as an example.

In the June 1st, 2012 Supply & Demand Chain article Former Gartner Analyst Joins BravoSolution, it was reported that North Rizza had “joined” the company as Vice President of Strategic Services.

According to the article, North Rizza “will leverage her practitioner heritage and deep domain knowledge to help BravoSolution’s customers accelerate sourcing and procurement performance.”

What is most interesting is that with this move it appears that North Rizza has come full circle.  Before joining AMR Research, which was purchased by Gartner in 2009 for $64 million, North Rizza held the position of Vice President of Supply Base Management at Modus Link.  That’s right, a service provider.

This means that the cross-pollination factor that has stirred up so much controversy of late within the realms of the public sector has been at work in the career of North Rizza. She, of course, is not alone in this regard as numerous journalists/analysts have made similar moves.  While it would be erroneous to presume that all such incestuous ties between analyst firms and the service provider community they are purportedly covering objectively are suspect, one cannot help but wonder what impact this has had on the evolution of the market itself.

After all, and as referenced in my March 20th, 2009 post Riding the Crest of a New Wave: How the Original SaaS Companies Have Gained the Upper Hand, journalists/analysts failed to respond in any meaningful way to a 2000 white paper by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). The SIIA paper in question predicted the demise of packaged desktop and enterprise applications?  I can understand why a Larry Ellison would for all these years have poo-pooed the notion of Web-based, on-demand applications.  But why did the journalists and analysts remain silent?

One can only wonder if objectivity had been shaded or muted by the “fraternal” nature of industry relationships that until recently has kept the value of the on-demand, Web-based world locked-up in a Pandora’s box of mutual, self-serving interest.  Or to put it another way, the evolutionary transformation of the industry today would have likely occurred at least 5 to 10 years earlier had the comfortable fox watching the hen house rapport between the service provider and journalist/analyst not existed.

In fact, I believe that had the market been allowed to develop the way it was supposed to outside of the bipartisan sentiment that governed industry coverage, it would have likely saved end-user clients hundreds of millions of dollars.

How you might ask?

Think of all the failed eProcurement initiatives in both the public and private sectors, and the exorbitant costs associated with the licensing, maintenance and consulting fees that were paid largely up front.  How could any mainstream journalist/analyst covering the industry during this period claim that they did a good job when so many initiatives failed to achieve the expected results?  Especially since the decision to move forward with the ill-conceived projects were based largely on their coverage and recommendations.

Once again let’s consider the North Rizza appointment to the position of Vice President of Strategic Services at BravoSolution.  While I found her to be highly credible during our interview on my radio show, one can only wonder what creditability she would possess outside of the Usual Suspects regarding influencing anyone’s decision to go with that organization’s solutions?  This is based primarily on the fact that there is an ever-growing cynicism in the industry towards journalists/analysts from her period.  You simply have to note the responses to my January 7th, 2011 post; “Madison Avenue oops . . . Make that Gartner, named Oracle as a leader in supply chain planning” to see that the old guard’s views are taken with more than a grain of salt by today’s procurement professionals.

Call it guilt by association but, I doubt that the burgeoning number of young and savvy up and coming procurement professionals will harbor the same inclinations of fealty towards the affiliations that marked and marred the industry’s delayed development over the past 10 to 20 years.

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