Spend Matters’ Kase Joins COUPA In An Interdepartmental Transfer

For five years, Kase worked at Spend Matters as vice president of research and lead analyst . . . Prior to Spend Matters, Kase worked in different roles for source-to-pay providers Ariba and SciQuest – through their Procuri and AECsoft USA acquisitions, respectively. – April 27th, 2017, Global Newswire

The incestuous nature of the procurement world is always an interesting and controversial topic for discussion.

Behind the headline, Coupa Hires Industry Expert Thomas Kase to Evangelize Value as a Service in Cloud Spend Management you will find what has traditionally been at the heart of what ails our industry; the tightly-knit fraternity between the media and those they are purportedly covering.

The Kase hiring is just the most recent of the many examples of how “unbiased analysts” seamlessly move between the two worlds. No wonder practitioner decision-makers are looking for alternative sources of reliable information on where the industry is really going to help them with their selection of service providers.

It is so obvious how the Kase announcement undermines the creditability of the Spend Matters brand, that further elaboration is not required. While SM may be arrogantly dismissive regarding the underlying and growing resentment that these cozy arrangements inspire amongst the service provider community, they are sadly oblivious to the fact that it is the practitioner world who will eventually kill the brand.

As for companies such as COUPA who willingly participates in this thinly veiled charade of analyst independence, they are like the advertisers I had referenced in yesterday’s post The End Of The Sponsored Blog Era. Specifically the point that “advertisers will not want their ads associated with content that, by its nature, cannot be trusted.”

After all, how can you trust SM’s assessment of any vendor if there is a chance that somewhere down the road they may be working for them? It is reminiscent of the SNL skit in which Will Ferrell’s George W. “tries” to endorse a reluctant John McCain, in that an SM endorsement is becoming the kiss of death regarding service provider creditability with practitioners. By the way, here is the link to that video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tb1mk-dixk

Take a second to cast your vote in the Procurement Insights poll;

You can follow this story on Twitter using the hashtag #coupakase

30