I was recently reminded of a great post by Jason Busch, who wrote, “Ariba doesn’t have customers; they have prisoners.” I think it took Jason great courage and frustration to write that post.
More recently, I interviewed a notable analyst from one of the Big Five accounting firms. They gave an incredible and refreshingly frank take on the state of the digital signature market. I wrote it up and got the thumbs up from the individual, who then passed it up the hierarchy for final approval. Everything was set to go to print when word came back that the higher-ups didn’t approve it because they were afraid it would offend another solution provider. The project was scrapped. Several months later, the firm published a paper featuring the provider they did not want to offend.
As you ponder the above example – which is the norm rather than the exception, you can’t help but wonder who is really controlling the content being pushed out to the practitioner community. In whose favor is the narrative being influenced? Which group is footing the bill for content creators and market influencers to craft and control the messaging?
You Have To Make A Living
Now, in all fairness to analysts, bloggers, and, yes, even consulting firms, if practitioners aren’t paying for industry coverage, then who is? And when big money is on the line, how many can honestly walk away from the hand that feeds them? We live in a real world where good intentions and integrity are often applauded but often unrewarded attributes.
So, how do you balance meaningful reporting and making a living in our industry? Between building friendships and ruffling feathers? That is the tightrope analysts, bloggers, and consultants must walk daily.
The problem is that with 80% of all generational initiatives failing, the current system isn’t working. It has never worked from the early ERP days to the GenAI era. In the end, the only thing that ultimately matters – the only measurement by which our individual and collective work can be judged are the outcomes.
Of course, walking the tightrope isn’t limited to analysts, bloggers, and consulting firms.
Can’t Walk Away
Not that long ago, I was talking with a senior executive from a notable solution provider who lamented that they could not walk away from accepting business from a practitioner-client whom they knew would not succeed with their platform.
The pressure from investment firms to hit quarterly targets and generate healthy returns is significant. In other words, sell first—worry about making it work later—keep the cash flowing in. I have seen many promising companies with genuinely great ideas get assimilated into the “bottom-line” reality of pushing products versus solving problems.
Getting It Right Or Being Right
This past year, in particular, has been one of the most eye-opening of my 40-plus years in the industry regarding what is behind the curtain of too many solution provider offerings – including the dotcom collapse in 2001.
When dealing with some solution providers in the past 12 months, I have been told:
not to ask them too many questions
not to contact past or current clients – the case studies we give you should suffice
not to air an interview that their own expert previously approved
not to talk to anyone other than a PR or marketing person
not to track their progress with a new client implementation – just share the press release
not talk to former senior company executives
On the other hand, I have been encouraged to:
publish pre-written content as written (which I will never do)
provide questions in advance of an interview for approval
My usual response to the above “don’ts and dos encouragements” is that we can’t continue to experience the generational initiative failure rates we have over the past several decades. In short, now isn’t the time to be right but to get it right!
How Do YOU Get It Right?
While I will let him tell the story via one of his next posts, Gartner’s “new BS Tech Category and a new BS Magic Quadrant,” as Michael Lamoureaux puts it, is DEX—the Digital Employee Experience solution and its purported impact on employee retention.
From my standpoint, it is a product looking for a problem that can be inflated beyond reasonable parameters to create a false sense of urgency, which is really an “If we can’t make a solution work here, maybe we can get it to work for this problem that we created.” Now, let’s go out there and sell the problem, e.g., telling the market that if they don’t have our solution, then they are going to miss out and fall far behind their competitors.
The History Of Repackaging Solutions (Short Video)
David Loseby once told me that the fear of loss is greater than the fear of gain. It is a powerful incentive in human nature.
However, the way for YOU to get it right is not to buy the fear—but to actively pursue the gain and use an agent-based assessment and implementation model in which technology is the last piece of the puzzle, not the first.
When you use an agent-based model, here is the result:
“As a result, they avoided the trap of eVA becoming a software project, as Bob put it, and were thereby able to shift the emphasis from an exercise in cost justification to one of process understanding and refinement. And while the Ariba application has done the job it was required to do, eVA’s effectiveness has little to do with the technology and more to do with the methodology the Virginia Brain Trust employed. When technology (nee software) is seen as the primary vehicle to drive results, it becomes ineffectual and mostly irrelevant. The 75 to 85% e-procurement initiative failure rate gives testimony to this fact.” – Yes, Virginia! There is more to e-procurement than software (September 2007)
Today’s Takeaway: Resist the fear, and go for the gain!
Procurement Insights
Walking The Procurement World Tightrope
Posted on August 28, 2024
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I was recently reminded of a great post by Jason Busch, who wrote, “Ariba doesn’t have customers; they have prisoners.” I think it took Jason great courage and frustration to write that post.
More recently, I interviewed a notable analyst from one of the Big Five accounting firms. They gave an incredible and refreshingly frank take on the state of the digital signature market. I wrote it up and got the thumbs up from the individual, who then passed it up the hierarchy for final approval. Everything was set to go to print when word came back that the higher-ups didn’t approve it because they were afraid it would offend another solution provider. The project was scrapped. Several months later, the firm published a paper featuring the provider they did not want to offend.
As you ponder the above example – which is the norm rather than the exception, you can’t help but wonder who is really controlling the content being pushed out to the practitioner community. In whose favor is the narrative being influenced? Which group is footing the bill for content creators and market influencers to craft and control the messaging?
You Have To Make A Living
Now, in all fairness to analysts, bloggers, and, yes, even consulting firms, if practitioners aren’t paying for industry coverage, then who is? And when big money is on the line, how many can honestly walk away from the hand that feeds them? We live in a real world where good intentions and integrity are often applauded but often unrewarded attributes.
So, how do you balance meaningful reporting and making a living in our industry? Between building friendships and ruffling feathers? That is the tightrope analysts, bloggers, and consultants must walk daily.
The problem is that with 80% of all generational initiatives failing, the current system isn’t working. It has never worked from the early ERP days to the GenAI era. In the end, the only thing that ultimately matters – the only measurement by which our individual and collective work can be judged are the outcomes.
Of course, walking the tightrope isn’t limited to analysts, bloggers, and consulting firms.
Can’t Walk Away
Not that long ago, I was talking with a senior executive from a notable solution provider who lamented that they could not walk away from accepting business from a practitioner-client whom they knew would not succeed with their platform.
The pressure from investment firms to hit quarterly targets and generate healthy returns is significant. In other words, sell first—worry about making it work later—keep the cash flowing in. I have seen many promising companies with genuinely great ideas get assimilated into the “bottom-line” reality of pushing products versus solving problems.
Getting It Right Or Being Right
This past year, in particular, has been one of the most eye-opening of my 40-plus years in the industry regarding what is behind the curtain of too many solution provider offerings – including the dotcom collapse in 2001.
When dealing with some solution providers in the past 12 months, I have been told:
On the other hand, I have been encouraged to:
My usual response to the above “don’ts and dos encouragements” is that we can’t continue to experience the generational initiative failure rates we have over the past several decades. In short, now isn’t the time to be right but to get it right!
How Do YOU Get It Right?
While I will let him tell the story via one of his next posts, Gartner’s “new BS Tech Category and a new BS Magic Quadrant,” as Michael Lamoureaux puts it, is DEX—the Digital Employee Experience solution and its purported impact on employee retention.
From my standpoint, it is a product looking for a problem that can be inflated beyond reasonable parameters to create a false sense of urgency, which is really an “If we can’t make a solution work here, maybe we can get it to work for this problem that we created.” Now, let’s go out there and sell the problem, e.g., telling the market that if they don’t have our solution, then they are going to miss out and fall far behind their competitors.
The History Of Repackaging Solutions (Short Video)
David Loseby once told me that the fear of loss is greater than the fear of gain. It is a powerful incentive in human nature.
However, the way for YOU to get it right is not to buy the fear—but to actively pursue the gain and use an agent-based assessment and implementation model in which technology is the last piece of the puzzle, not the first.
When you use an agent-based model, here is the result:
“As a result, they avoided the trap of eVA becoming a software project, as Bob put it, and were thereby able to shift the emphasis from an exercise in cost justification to one of process understanding and refinement. And while the Ariba application has done the job it was required to do, eVA’s effectiveness has little to do with the technology and more to do with the methodology the Virginia Brain Trust employed. When technology (nee software) is seen as the primary vehicle to drive results, it becomes ineffectual and mostly irrelevant. The 75 to 85% e-procurement initiative failure rate gives testimony to this fact.” – Yes, Virginia! There is more to e-procurement than software (September 2007)
Today’s Takeaway: Resist the fear, and go for the gain!
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