More and more CPOs are now actively looking beyond the logos to see who is behind the service provider from the procurement and supply chain industry experience and expertise standpoint.
In the coming months and years, the experience and expertise will become more important than the technology and a logo placement on a chart.
Queue The Who song “Who are you!”
So, Who Are You?
Over the past few days, I have received many emails from service providers asking three questions:
- Why didn’t I get my company logo on a list of service providers?
- How do I get my logo on a list of service providers?
- What do you think of my company?
By and large, my answer has been the same to all three questions.
Why Am I Not On The List?
What is happening is that the field is becoming so crowded that company names and logos aren’t enough.
You need to move beyond selling just the tech and showcasing the experience and expertise behind it.
Based on my preliminary research, here are factors that likely impact your inclusion in the various lists:
First, your competitors in the Small Business, Mid-Market, and Enterprise categories rate 4.1 to 4.8 in Customer SAT scores. Your company is rated below four at 3.8.
However, the real problem is a lack of recognition in any category. For example, here are your Top 10 competitors across the three business categories: SAP, Ariba, Coupa, and seven others. Except for two providers, the remaining eight listed as competitors don’t make a lot of sense. How are you a competitor of Coupa or SAP?
This means that the market watchers generally have no real idea of how to classify your company. In other words, you are lost in a forest – another face in the crowd of logos.
Even if someone takes the time I did to filter through to understand your category placement, your two primary competitors score considerably higher than you at 4.7 and 4.8 out of 5, respectively.
As unique an offering as I believe you have, you are not at a point of broader market adoption, e.g., scalability beyond generating enough revenue to stay in business – I believe the annual revenue number is $XX.X Million US.
I also don’t think the two companies in your category are on the same level as your company regarding market intelligence.
That’s why your company leadership needs to step out from behind the logo to engage, educate and sell to the market and achieve scalability beyond a boutique solution status to get on the industry radar screen.
How Do I Get On The List?
As I wrote in the article, the biggest challenge is that with the “volume of logos,” almost every CPO or C-Suite Exec does not have the time to use a magnifying glass to examine it, let alone determine which one best suits them to dig deeper as some have told me – information overload.
It was like this in 2009 – and there weren’t anywhere near as many players as today, which is why the Titans series was so well received. It helped my readers to sift through the clutter and learn more about providers such as the following:
Coupa, Freightos, Zycus, ScoutRFP – which was purchased by Workday etc.
That is why it is so crucial for a provider’s leader to step out from behind their logo and showcase their personal expertise. It is even more critical now that we are in an overcrowded market where technology reliability is no longer the issue it once was 10 to 20 years ago, e.g., gone are the days of thinking, “No one ever got fired for choosing IBM.”
Where does your company stand? Somewhere lost in the crowd.
What Do You Think Of My Company?
Technology has come a long way since the early days of proprietary systems and the need to constantly “debug” lines of code. I remember those days well.
Today, SaaS solutions and composable Apps such as AppXtend mean that any provider’s tech, while different, is functionally sound.
The real differentiator is the logic, e.g. industry experience and expertise behind the tech (agent-based) versus features, functions, and benefits analysis (equation-based).
As a side note, it would be cool if we replaced company logos with the profile pictures of the company leaders instead.
Procurement Insights 
Colin Cram
October 18, 2023
I fell sound asleep during a Who performance at the 1970 Isle of Wight Rock Festival. I was in the middle of the grass arena with thousands of others. When I woke up, I was the only one left. I was very annoyed, but had been awake for maybe 60 hours beforehand. No, I had not used any substances.