Monthly Archives: June 2008

Move over crowd-sourcing, here comes ITO 2.0!

The outsourcing journal recently had a good article on “OpenWater Networks” and how it partnered with Augmentum to build its Enterprise 2.0 Service Network – a “Social Network” for work – using “IT Outsourcing 2.0” or ITO 2.0. What is ITO 2.0? It’s the outsourcing of IT work to where the best brains are. Which is the way it should be.

I really liked some of the common sense quotes in the article from Timothy Chou. When he says that if you outsource to someone who is cheaper but not as smart as you, you have to spend a great deal of time managing them and that you (have to) look over everything down to the tiniest detail, he couldn’t be more accurate. It’s also true that this causes you to lose your economic advantage. However, it’s not true if you hire someone smarter than you (who has a PhD, for example) because you (can) let them flourish on their own. Just like when you hire an executive chef, you don’t have to tell him how to cook – you just have to tell him that you want a chicken dish that’s sweet and spicy and then let him work.

The advantages of this method, when compared to ITO 1.0 – which takes you to where the warm bodies are cheapest, are that partners are free to demonstrate their expertise, there is (essentially) no duplication of work, and innovation can flourish. As long as you make sure everyone speaks a common language from day one, the method can utilize the talents of all involved – especially if you augment the method with regular face-to-face communication. OpenWater personnel, in San Francisco (California, USA), make regular visits to Augmentum’s sites in Shanghai and Beijing (China) and Augmentum developers routinely visit the Openwater offices in California. This encourages the move away from e-mail, where context is loss, to the “service networks” that OpenWater is developing. This not only helps OpenWater and Augmentum build innovative software that would have cost them 10 times more money and 10 times more time if they had done it under ITO 1.0, but insures that the products are actually consumable – as, to borrow a phrase, they’re eating the dog food they make.

So how does this differ from crowd-sourcing? In crowd-sourcing, everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, [and] even do corporate R & D and the company takes advantage of the collective to augment their internal capabilities. In ITO 2.0, the company is going out to the collective and specifically seeking out the best and the brightest. It then uses the network to share information and form relationships with these individuals to advance the common goals. In essence, the major difference is crowd-sourcing is ad-hoc and more in tune with open source while ITO 2.0 is more organized and more in tune with standard corporate methodologies. And the major similarity is that both revolve around the same underlying principles of using the network and the best and brightest to get the work done (wherever they are) – and that’s a good thing.

Blogger Relations

TechCrunch recently published a great post by Brian Solis of FutureWorks on “PR Secrets for Startups” that is a MUST-READ for all of you PR types that think sending unsolicited press releases to blog masters counts as “blogger relations”. (By the way, it doesn’t!)

Brian’s post offered up 12 secrets of PR 2.0 that you need to master if you’re going to be effective in today’s world where the web (regardless of what number you put after it) is your primary method of reaching a large audience. In this post, I’m going to explain how ten of these secrets apply to blogs in particular and, most importantly, how they apply to this blog. Without further ado, here are the secrets – and what you need to know!

  1. You’re not the only story in town!
    Bloggers ARE the busiest people you’re ever going to meet. And, as Brian points out, they’re interested only in what’s interesting and relevant. Generic over-the-top inbound emails, press releases, and copied stories from other publications aren’t going to get their interest – and they certainly don’t get mine.
    You send me an unsolicited press release as a “story idea”, and I write a new spam filter / auto-delete rule. It’s that simple. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I’m willing to write about any solution provider in the supply chain space that has a product and / or service offering that they are willing to openly discuss over a (web) demo – it’s what the blog lives for. (In the case of a service provider, a frank discussion of the methodology and how it was successfully applied to benefit a client combined with a brief conversation with the client for verification.) I’m interested in facts, not spin, and how purchasing / procurement / supply management / spend management practitioners can use your offering to improve their companies and themselves. Also, a PowerPoint presentation over a webex does not count as a demo. (If you have a PowerPoint presentation that you believe captures important background material about your offering, feel free to send it to me and I’ll be more than happy to review it before the demo.)
    Furthermore, your “priority” is not my “priority”. Any unsolicited e-mail from an unknown sender marked as a “priority message” also generates the creation of a new anti-spam / auto-delete rule in my mail reader.  My “priority” is generating informative and educational blog posts for my innovative readers.  Press releases do not fall into that category.
  2. Pick the Right Person to Handle Blogger Relations
    Bloggers are not your average journalists. They are typically consultants who are experts in their fields and they are going to want to talk to someone who knows what they are talking about and who is able to handle the difficult business AND technology questions. A PR person that doesn’t know more than what can be found on the corporate web-site and in the press-releases is not going to impress a blogger who is always short on time.
    the doctor holds a PhD in computer science (in multidimensional and spatial data structures and computational geometry) and has extensive technical expertise in algorithms, databases, modeling, optimization, analysis, software architecture, and the protocols on which the internet and the World Wide Web is built. In addition, the doctor has extensive expertise in sourcing, procurement, and supply chain processes, methodologies, and technologies. A PR person who thinks Java is what you drink when you wake up, IP only refers to intellectual property, C is the third letter of the alphabet, and that three-tier architecture refers to a three-story house is probably not the right person to be reaching out to the doctor, especially if this person also believes sourcing is done by sorcerers, three-way matching refers to insuring your blouse, skirt, and shoes all match, and drill-down is a command given by a foreman to an oil-rig worker.
  3. Interaction is the Key
    As Brian points out, you are equally important in the process. Whomever is handling blogger relations should start of with an introduction, offer to hold a conversation, and, most importantly, demonstrate an understanding of what the Blogger’s blog is all about.
    At the time of writing, there are over 850 posts consisting of over 579,000 words (which equates to over 1000 pages) on Sourcing Innovation – and if that’s not enough to give you a good idea what this blog is about, then I don’t know what is. Furthermore, there are a number of posts indexed on the right-hand sidebar that explain what the blog is all about.
  4. Identify the Right Blogs
    Not every blog is the right blog for you. Target the right ones for maximum effectiveness.
    This blog is about sourcing, procurement, and related supply chain issues and innovations. It’s not about 3PLs or RFID technology, for example.
  5. Don’t Launch on Mondays
    Everybody is busy Monday morning, and that’s when everyone else decides they need to get their story out too. Furthermore, bloggers do need time to prepare a good story. Sure most of us can get a decent length blog entry out in under an hour, but we’re not always able to type it up right away – and we do need time for reflection if we are to put our best blog forward.
    As a general rule, you should contact the doctor at least two weeks before you would like a story out there and be prepared to hold a conversation over a web-based demo at least a week before you’d like to see your story in print. Earlier is better, since the doctor makes his living as a consultant, and isn’t always available on short notice.
  6. No Two Bloggers are Created Equal
    Bloggers are not traditional paid-by-the-story up-and-coming news-room journalists that are easily replaced – they are unique individuals with their own expertise, focus, and audience.
    This goes double for the doctor – if you familiarize yourself with the space, you’ll realize that he is the only independent blogger with a significant following that has an extensive background as technologist. (Most bloggers are ex-marketing, public relations, and business consulting.)
  7. It’s all about Success!
    Traffic levels, especially those measured in hits, are meaningless. It’s how many unique eyeballs in your target market that read the blog – not how many times some yahoo interested in the gossip of the day reloads the page. Remember The Brain’s Lesson – you want the wheat, not the chaff.
  8. Make the Story Relevant to the Blogger
    Focus on an elevator pitch that is compelling, memorable, and relevant to what the blogger likes to blog about.
    For example, optimization and analysis are among the doctor‘s favorite topics, but the doctor is specifically interested in the application and capabilities. Thus, the fact that you just released version X.Y of your optimizer alone is of no interest to the doctor (of course it’s faster, why else would you have released it?) and regular readers of this blog will know that the doctor does not equate static spend reporting on a data warehouse with spend analysis, so if you’re representing one of the 28+ companies who does, don’t bother asking if I want to hear about the company’s latest “spend analysis” release.
  9. Identify the Spokesperson
    No matter how knowledgeable you are as a PR person, there’s going to come a point where the blogger is going to need to speak to someone at the solution provider you are representing. Make sure your client has someone designated as the lead contact who is both extremely knowledgeable about the products and/or service and who is a good communicator.
    Also make sure the individual is willing to have a discussion beyond what was said in the press release and / or posted on the web-site. I can read a lot faster than I can listen to you restate what I’ve already read. I can certainly understand a company’s desire to keep certain information semi-private / trade secret, but if you’re not willing to discuss how the black-box works, don’t expect me to believe that it does work.
  10. Follow the Blog and Join in the Conversation
    If you really want to understand what kind of news is going to interest the blogger in question, you need to follow the blog. And if you want to insure that the blogger takes your e-mails seriously, prove your worth by leaving a meaningful comment from time to time – and, when the opportunity arises, engage the blogger in a meaningful conversation about the issues, not just the story of the day.
    And don’t be afraid to have a contradictory opinion. You’re also free to think I’m stark raving mad, but if you disagree with me (and/or think I’m stark raving mad), be sure to explain why. After all, how am I to understand your point of view if you don’t explain it? And what are my readers going to learn? This blog is about education and self-improvement. If you remember nothing else from this post, remember that.
  11. And DON’T Ask for an NDA.
        the doctor has the same policy that all good analyst firms (including Gartner) and bloggers have when it comes to NDA’s, he just says “No”. The whole point of an interaction with a blogger is so that he or she can understand your company and your solution and write about it. Signing an NDA defeats that purpose … What’s covered? What’s Not? What can I blog about? No good blogger plays in that minefield. And as Vinnie Mirchandani clearly explains over on Deal Architect, if an average company did its homework, it would find that the biggest “leakers” of truly proprietary information tend to be employees – salespeople who take customer and price lists, engineers who take their intimate product details when they change jobs.
        the doctor only signs NDAs with clients, and only with respect to projects the doctor is working on, and only for the length of time that information related to the project needs to be confidential. After all, while the doctor understands that certain information needs to be “eyes only” for a very small group of individuals, there’s no reason that information needs to be shared during a demo or discussion of capabilities, and as Vinnie notes, just about everything else should be graded in terms of reality – is the information really, really confidential and not already already out there or such that it could not be deduced with little effort?

What I Learned From Conference Season IV

In my last post I shared with you the fourth lesson I learned from Conference season, that

  • Apparently, Conference Season Was a Bust!

Even though Alan Buxton of Trading Partners and Tim Minahan of Supply Excellence chimed in with a pair of posts yesterday, I’ve yet to be contradicted. In Allan’s post, he noted that there appears to be a renaissance in eSourcing providers, as he found more were exhibiting this year than he’s used to, and that “green” and “sustainability” were hot topics on everyone’s lists. However, neither of these observations were unexpected, as there’s been a series of press releases from a flurry of vendors in the first part of this year announcing new “solutions” to the marketplace, as well as a lot of buzz on “sustainability”, including the buzz here on this blog in the last cross-blog series.

In Tim’s post, he decided to bypass the primary focus of the topic entirely and instead give us a post on “How to Negotiate and Manage Best-Value Events”, using the latest analysis of fellow crusader Justin Falgione, that is available on Ariba (acquired by SAP) SupplyWatch. Now I agree there is some savings potential, as they found that 1% of a typical company’s sales is spent on meetings and events, but if you’re not getting anything out of them, why hold them at all?

Anyway, maybe next conference season will be better. And if you are organizing, or know of, an event that is worthwhile, please submit it for addition to the master directory on the SI resource site#! The site has been updated and you can now submit events for consideration through the site. In addition, the site will now be tracking (executive) roundtables, seminars, training sessions, workshops, and webcasts – so please feel free to submit them at your convenience. It’s to everyone’s benefit to get this information out there in one centralized site.

# The resource site was archived in 2017 and permanently removed in 2024.

ThomasNet Takes Sourcing to the Masses

ThomasNet recently launched it’s free Purchasing Tools, based on SourceOne’s (acquired by Corcentric) free WhyAbe (sunset) platform. This platform allows buyers who still haven’t adopted an e-Sourcing platform to test the waters with a basic RFx and Auction service.

The platform, which comes with a complete Buyer User Manual as well as a Supplier User Manual, allows buyers to create a private or private RFX, see their listings on a dashboard (where they can also identify reviewers and block blacklisted suppliers from bidding), and also take advantage of ThomasNet’s engineering, web, and community tools. The RFxs are essentially RFQs where you solicit bids for well a basket of well-defined products and services, and the reverse auction formats are limited to supplier rank and lowest bid, but that’s where most companies start on their e-Sourcing journey.

The auction tool allows you to specify whether or not you want duplicate bids, minimum decrements during bidding (as a number or percentage), and automatic extensions to prevent bid sniping. The product also supports multiple currencies, attachments, and product images as well as e-mails to invited suppliers. It’s not on par with any of the paid Software-as-a-Service offerings, but as I’ve said before, it’s cracking the sourcing mold and offering a free solution that companies new to sourcing and sourcing technology can use and experiment to find out what works for them, what doesn’t, and what they need help on. It’s a great way for a company to test the water as it provides a quick start to e-Sourcing with a price that can’t be beat. Then, when an organization has identified it’s needs, and, more importantly, identified what it can do well in house – and what it can not, it can always upgrade to a more extensive e-Sourcing platform and retain a PSP, like Source One, to help it with those categories that it doesn’t have the experience, or the leverage, to get savings on.

So, let’s give ThomasNet some applause for trying to spread the sourcing word and hope that this convinces more organizations still using e-mail and fax for RFQs to join the twenty-first century.

Vinimaya : The B2B Search Engine

Last November, I introduced you to Vinimaya (rebranded Aquiire, acquired by Coupa) in my post on The Next Wave in Product Catalogue Management. With their agent technology, Vinimaya is a leader in supplier enablement for those companies that need an integrated catalog solution for their e-Procurement platform as their Product Catalog Management Solution (PCM) supports whatever mechanism the supplier already has – be it a punch-out, catalog, market-place, or plain-old web-site.

However, Vinimaya, which is a very stable and profitable company (despite some competitor’s claims to the contrary), is not content to just have the best PCM solution. They’ve spent the past six months improving their core technology and working on additional offerings to benefit the supply management space. In addition to their streamlined agent technology-enabled SmartSearch Buyer, which they are able to implement for an average large customer, who needs hundreds of suppliers enabled, in four to five weeks, they now offer a SmartSearch Supplier service for suppliers, B2B transaction services, and they are working on a new Discovery service that is likely to be launched before the end of the year.

Their SmartSearch Supplier service allows suppliers that require specialized punchouts or catalog formats to support their buyers to offer these formats without having to build these punchouts or specialized (XML, CIF, etc.) formats on their own. The SmartSearch Supplier offering, which uses the same underlying agent technology as SmartSearch Buyer, translates the supplier’s current catalog format (web-site, database, XML, etc.) into whatever format the buyer requires (because they use Ariba Supplier Network, SciQuest, Ketera, etc.) on the fly. In addition, it supports the same price override capability as SmartSearch Buyer, so the supplier can customize its prices to each buyer using a set of pricing rules.

Their B2B transaction services supports internet EDI with seven standard document formats, p-card payments, XML-EDI punchouts, and interchange and is delivered by their partners, including VITG USA and ESIS. In other words, Vinimaya is all about the internet as the network and providing you with the ability to connect with anyone, anywhere, anytime.

However, it is the SmartSearch Discovery offering that they are currently working on now that really got my attention when I caught up with them last week. Right now, they allow you to search multiple sites seamlessly through their SmartSearch Buyer, which is more than any other catalog solution allows you to do. However, in the near future, it sounds like they will also allow you to search third-party marketplaces at the same time, in the same view, and seamlessly integrate the best of B2C with the best of B2B. Right now, you can search by product, category, part, and supplier location – everything you can do with your standard catalog. But with this new service, you’ll also be able to search by component, manufacturer, third party rating, and any other piece of information that is out there on third party marketplaces. And there’ll be better integration into your current e-Procurement and e-Sourcing platforms. What will it look like? That’s a topic for a later post. So stay tuned!