Unfortunately, Emptoris (acquired by IBM, sunset in 2017) was not among the companies I was able to meet with during my whirlwind tour of Boston, but that didn’t stop me from trying to find out why they were all so busy. Apparently, those days were filled with meetings and company events to kick off the new year.
The official report I was able to solicit went something along the lines of the following.
The week culminated with a company wide meeting and post-holiday party where Emptoris essentially gave their employees a company update and a cause to celebrate. The major bullet points were:
- Last year was Emptoris’ best year ever, with each quarter booking more sales and revenue than the quarter before.
- Emptoris had more deals than Ariba.
- Emptoris has succeeding in swiping at least one marquee Ariba customer.
- Emptoris webinars are in hot demand … with their upcoming webinar already clocking in at over three thousand registrants.
- Their consulting group and India operations are increasing rapidly to support demand.
- Key verticals for Emptoris are financial services, CPG, and pharmaceutical.
- A number of significant product enhancements are planned for the week ahead.
However, I’m sure the unofficial transcript of what transpired really was more in line with the following.
Early in the week:
Pinky: Gee, Brain, what are we going to do this year?
Brain: The same thing we do every year, try to take over the (sourcing) world!
Pinky: Narf! Zort! How are we going to do that Brain?
Brain: As you know, people in today’s dollar-driven economy are obsessed with anything that they think will fatten their own paychecks. My plan is to promise everyone who buys our system shares in our new sourcing savings investment plan which is funded by 10% of all of our sales. The sourcing savings investment fund will use our new real-time optimization technology to quickly buy and sell volatile shares at the lead end of the spikes, before everyone else decides to cash out, and aggregate value through the sheer volume of trades. This plan should net us billions before everyone else figures out that accelerated buying and selling short can make you billions and everyone else starts doing it and our algorithm fails miserably and we lose it all – but it won’t matter, because by then everyone will be using our software and we’ll rule the sourcing world!!!
Pinky: And how are we going to convince the employees this is a good plan?
Brain: You mean my loyal subjects that already address me as “Your Highness”? That’s easy, we just tell them all that they get a cut of the investment plan at the end of every quarter based on sales volume.
Pinky: That sounds fantastic Brain! Poit!
Brain: Yes, and failing that, I just filled my brand new playbook with backup plans that are sure to work if this one doesn’t work as spectacularly as I planned!