With posts such as It’s the end of the world as we know it . . . at least for traditional analyst firms and bloggers, and my questioning the wisdom of a blogger’s decision to feature Deloitte’s Brian Umbenhauer as a co-author of a post on SaaS Vendor Selection/Implementation Tips, you are not likely going to be surprised by today’s title.
This being said I do not intentionally or proactively look for reasons to criticize the traditional – alright, let’s just call them old and out of step pundits – for their missteps. However, and based upon Deloitte’s selection of SciQuest as one of the “fastest growing” companies on their 2014 Technology Fast 500 List, it is difficult to ignore, let alone remain silent.
Like the time one of our kids attempted to flush an entire roll – okay 3 rolls – of toilet paper down the toilet, simply to see if it could be done, you can’t help but wonder “what are they thinking?”
Reminiscent of the old Geico living under a rock commercials, you would literally have to be living under a rock not to know what is going on with SciQuest. Yet, here you have one of the “Big Four” professional services firms extolling the virtues of a company that is in obvious trouble. Good thing Deloitte is not in the travel business otherwise one might find themselves booked for a winter getaway to Afghanistan – which is definitely not the kind of hot spot you would want to visit. Personally I would prefer the Bahamas – but that’s just me.
So here is my question . . . what is Deloitte’s thinking?
Seriously, any insights or answers you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
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Procurement Insights 
nexusxyz
December 1, 2014
There seems to be a bit of a trend with the ‘old’ consulting firms trying to ‘pick a winner’. We know that KPMG have ‘picked’ Coupa and have been spruking to governments here in Australia but with no idea how to ‘do’ whole of government and address the challenges. Also Accenture a few months ago ‘cemented’ its relationship with Ariba. Personally, I think they are looking for annuity income to go with consulting services as on-premises big ticket implementations decline along with traditional consulting revenues.
piblogger
December 1, 2014
Interesting perspective, and certainly in line with an article I wrote back in 2011 titled “Madison Avenue ooops . . . make that Gartner, names Oracle as a leader in supply chain planning.” Here is the link; http://wp.me/p4HrB-1Z3
What is also interesting is your reference to Coupa regarding government. I have always considered Coupa to be a solid organization however, I have heard rumblings from the public sector here in North America that have been let’s say interesting. Makes one wonder if, as one of the old guard KPMG – like the general fighting the last battle – is hurting as opposed to helping Coupa.
nexusxyz
December 2, 2014
Not all Cloud ePocurement services are equal and the vast majority are not what I call ‘full service’. They fail to address complex purchasing and ‘Directs’.
piblogger
December 1, 2014
Reblogged this on Procurement Insights EU Edition and commented:
Editor’s Note: Does traditional analyst and consulting firm support hurt or help next generation vendors?
nexusxyz
December 2, 2014
They tussled over two things – with on-premise it was revenue share and who owns the client. With Cloud services it is easier for the software service owner to build a repeatable ‘stand up’ consulting service around their offering. However, with a repeatable cloud service the pot shrinks and there is less to go around. Also the Tier 1 consulting fees are hard to justify.
I think most legacy organisations, which includes Tier 1 consultancies, are struggling to come to terms with ‘digital transformation’ and what it means for their business in terms of costs, skills and margins. They would like to tap into the revenues generated by cloud service providers but this conflicts with their legacy business model so I would suggest that they are detrimental. However, some organisations like xchanging are offering a hybridized cloud information and sourcing service as a bundle.