Which providers are yesterday’s Blockbuster and which are the future Netflixs?
Blockbuster was excellent at what it did. That is the part people forget. It was not a badly run company staffed by people who could not see screens coming. It ran thousands of stores, managed inventory across all of them, and was genuinely good at the business of renting videos from a shelf. It failed anyway — and it failed precisely because it was so good at the thing it had decided it was.
Because Blockbuster had defined itself by its category. It was in the video-rental-store business. What it was actually in — what it had always been in — was the business of getting people the entertainment they wanted, conveniently. Those sound like the same thing right up until the operating reality shifts. When it did, mastery of the category became irrelevant, because the category was never the point. The problem was the point, and the problem had moved.
This is the risk that matters most in ProcureTech right now, and it applies to the giants at least as much as the startups.
The category is not the problem
The providers most at risk are not the small ones, or the unfunded ones, or the ones with thin feature sets. They are the ones — of any size — who see their solution only within the confines of procurement.
That confinement feels like focus. It looks like discipline. A provider who knows procurement cold, who has built deeply for it, who speaks its language fluently, appears to be doing everything right. And within the boundary, they are. But the boundary is the trap. Because the problems that actually determine whether a procurement initiative succeeds do not respect the procurement boundary. They live in the seams — between the operational reality of a business and the systems meant to govern it, between what a function does and what the organization actually needs. A provider who can only see procurement cannot see the seam, because the seam crosses the line they have accepted as the edge of their world.
That is Blockbuster defining itself as video-rental-stores. Excellent at the category, blind to the problem, and therefore blind to the moment the problem moved.
Solving the problem versus selling the solution
There is a tell that separates the two kinds of provider, and it has nothing to do with size or funding.
One kind keeps asking what problem the customer actually has, and whether their solution fits it — and is willing to say when it does not. The other kind has a solution and looks for places to sell it, whether it fits or not. The second is the more dangerous posture, and it is the one that grows most comfortably by acquisition: buy a capability, add it to the catalogue, sell the expanded catalogue. Growth by accumulation can look like strength for a long time. But a catalogue assembled to be sold is not the same as a solution built to fit, and the gap between the two is exactly where initiatives fail — quietly, eighteen months after the purchase, when the software is fine and the outcome never arrives.
Selling the solution regardless of fit is the procurement equivalent of insisting the customer come to the store. It optimizes the thing you already sell instead of asking whether it still solves the problem. Blockbuster did that too, right to the end — and the end is oddly specific. There is exactly one Blockbuster store left on Earth, in Bend, Oregon, kept alive by a community that loves it as a memory. Nine thousand stores at the peak, reduced to a single surviving location that endures precisely because it no longer pretends to be the future. That is what optimizing the store looks like after the problem has moved on without you.
The moment the problem moved
The reason this matters now, and not merely in principle, is that the operating reality is shifting in exactly the way that punishes category-confinement.
Artificial intelligence is beginning to operate across functional boundaries — not procurement, then operations, then finance as separate stages, but as one connected flow. When that happens, the value stops living inside any single function and starts living in how the functions connect. A solution that understands only the procurement slice becomes a component in someone else’s larger system rather than the system itself. That is the unbundling I have written about before: the moment the problem reorganizes itself across the old boundaries, the tools defined by those boundaries become features, not platforms.
This is the screen arriving for the video store. Not a failure of execution — a shift in where the problem lives.
What defining yourself by the problem actually looks like
I can show you the alternative, because I have been running it for a long time.
The framework I work from began with an engagement in 1998 — an asset-intensive operator whose real gains came not from the technology eventually selected but from the readiness work done before it. The same framework, unchanged in principle, was applied in a recent engagement with another asset-intensive operator in 2026, where it identified a structural seam between the layer holding the organization’s real-time operational truth and the system meant to govern it — before the client disclosed the seam existed. Twenty-eight years apart. Entirely different technology eras. Entirely different circumstances. The same framework, still working.
It has lasted that long for one reason: it was never confined to a category. It was not an ERP-readiness method, though that was the category in 1998. It was not a procurement framework, though that was the category through the 2000s. It was not an AI-governance approach, though that is the category people would file it under today. It was always about the problem underneath all of those categories — the operating reality, and whether the organization is ready for what it is about to do. Because it was defined by the problem and not the category, it outlived every tool that mistook its category for the point.
That is the whole difference. It is the difference between the store and the thing the store was for.
So which are you?
Back in 2005, in a market assessment I still have, I set down the view that the traditional model was heading for a reckoning. That reckoning has been arriving in slow motion ever since, and the current shift is simply its latest and sharpest phase.
So the question for any provider — and it is a question they should ask honestly, not defensively — is not whether they are good at procurement. Many of the ones most at risk are excellent at it. The question is whether they have mistaken being good at the category for solving the problem. Whether, when the problem moves across the boundary they have drawn around themselves, they will be able to follow it — or whether they will keep insisting, right to the end, that the customer come to the store.
Which providers are yesterday’s Blockbuster, and which are tomorrow’s Netflix, will not be decided by who has the best features today. It will be decided by who understood, before it was obvious, that the category was never the point.
Truth Is Believing. Accuracy Is Knowing. Outcome Is Proof.™
-30-
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The ProcureTech Providers Most at Risk
Posted on July 3, 2026
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Which providers are yesterday’s Blockbuster and which are the future Netflixs?
Blockbuster was excellent at what it did. That is the part people forget. It was not a badly run company staffed by people who could not see screens coming. It ran thousands of stores, managed inventory across all of them, and was genuinely good at the business of renting videos from a shelf. It failed anyway — and it failed precisely because it was so good at the thing it had decided it was.
Because Blockbuster had defined itself by its category. It was in the video-rental-store business. What it was actually in — what it had always been in — was the business of getting people the entertainment they wanted, conveniently. Those sound like the same thing right up until the operating reality shifts. When it did, mastery of the category became irrelevant, because the category was never the point. The problem was the point, and the problem had moved.
This is the risk that matters most in ProcureTech right now, and it applies to the giants at least as much as the startups.
The category is not the problem
The providers most at risk are not the small ones, or the unfunded ones, or the ones with thin feature sets. They are the ones — of any size — who see their solution only within the confines of procurement.
That confinement feels like focus. It looks like discipline. A provider who knows procurement cold, who has built deeply for it, who speaks its language fluently, appears to be doing everything right. And within the boundary, they are. But the boundary is the trap. Because the problems that actually determine whether a procurement initiative succeeds do not respect the procurement boundary. They live in the seams — between the operational reality of a business and the systems meant to govern it, between what a function does and what the organization actually needs. A provider who can only see procurement cannot see the seam, because the seam crosses the line they have accepted as the edge of their world.
That is Blockbuster defining itself as video-rental-stores. Excellent at the category, blind to the problem, and therefore blind to the moment the problem moved.
Solving the problem versus selling the solution
There is a tell that separates the two kinds of provider, and it has nothing to do with size or funding.
One kind keeps asking what problem the customer actually has, and whether their solution fits it — and is willing to say when it does not. The other kind has a solution and looks for places to sell it, whether it fits or not. The second is the more dangerous posture, and it is the one that grows most comfortably by acquisition: buy a capability, add it to the catalogue, sell the expanded catalogue. Growth by accumulation can look like strength for a long time. But a catalogue assembled to be sold is not the same as a solution built to fit, and the gap between the two is exactly where initiatives fail — quietly, eighteen months after the purchase, when the software is fine and the outcome never arrives.
Selling the solution regardless of fit is the procurement equivalent of insisting the customer come to the store. It optimizes the thing you already sell instead of asking whether it still solves the problem. Blockbuster did that too, right to the end — and the end is oddly specific. There is exactly one Blockbuster store left on Earth, in Bend, Oregon, kept alive by a community that loves it as a memory. Nine thousand stores at the peak, reduced to a single surviving location that endures precisely because it no longer pretends to be the future. That is what optimizing the store looks like after the problem has moved on without you.
The moment the problem moved
The reason this matters now, and not merely in principle, is that the operating reality is shifting in exactly the way that punishes category-confinement.
Artificial intelligence is beginning to operate across functional boundaries — not procurement, then operations, then finance as separate stages, but as one connected flow. When that happens, the value stops living inside any single function and starts living in how the functions connect. A solution that understands only the procurement slice becomes a component in someone else’s larger system rather than the system itself. That is the unbundling I have written about before: the moment the problem reorganizes itself across the old boundaries, the tools defined by those boundaries become features, not platforms.
This is the screen arriving for the video store. Not a failure of execution — a shift in where the problem lives.
What defining yourself by the problem actually looks like
I can show you the alternative, because I have been running it for a long time.
The framework I work from began with an engagement in 1998 — an asset-intensive operator whose real gains came not from the technology eventually selected but from the readiness work done before it. The same framework, unchanged in principle, was applied in a recent engagement with another asset-intensive operator in 2026, where it identified a structural seam between the layer holding the organization’s real-time operational truth and the system meant to govern it — before the client disclosed the seam existed. Twenty-eight years apart. Entirely different technology eras. Entirely different circumstances. The same framework, still working.
It has lasted that long for one reason: it was never confined to a category. It was not an ERP-readiness method, though that was the category in 1998. It was not a procurement framework, though that was the category through the 2000s. It was not an AI-governance approach, though that is the category people would file it under today. It was always about the problem underneath all of those categories — the operating reality, and whether the organization is ready for what it is about to do. Because it was defined by the problem and not the category, it outlived every tool that mistook its category for the point.
That is the whole difference. It is the difference between the store and the thing the store was for.
So which are you?
Back in 2005, in a market assessment I still have, I set down the view that the traditional model was heading for a reckoning. That reckoning has been arriving in slow motion ever since, and the current shift is simply its latest and sharpest phase.
So the question for any provider — and it is a question they should ask honestly, not defensively — is not whether they are good at procurement. Many of the ones most at risk are excellent at it. The question is whether they have mistaken being good at the category for solving the problem. Whether, when the problem moves across the boundary they have drawn around themselves, they will be able to follow it — or whether they will keep insisting, right to the end, that the customer come to the store.
Which providers are yesterday’s Blockbuster, and which are tomorrow’s Netflix, will not be decided by who has the best features today. It will be decided by who understood, before it was obvious, that the category was never the point.
Truth Is Believing. Accuracy Is Knowing. Outcome Is Proof.™
-30-
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