As announced last Sunday in our post on how the Masters will have the 50/50 in their Sights, this week the Spend Matters 50/50 … 50 to watch, 50 to know … list for 2016 was announced. It consists of 100 companies that every Supply Management professional should know about. (Even if the solution is not right for you, or your organization, you don’t know what tomorrow will bring after a job transfer or a merger.)

For those who missed it, this is the list of the “to watch” companies, augmented with links to past SI (and SM) coverage, and annotations where coverage is coming soon!

And now you know.

For those curious about how the list was arrived at, the public defender has a great explanation over on Spend Matters UK (in “spend matters 50 to know and 50 to watch questions and answers”). Seven analysts across three continents argued over who should and should not be on the list, making it one of the most objective subjective lists (not rankings) out there. (Now, I do not think any of us got to see all of our top ten picks on either list, but you can be sure that any company that made the list is a company that multiple analysts, including analysts that cover different areas of the Supply Management space, saw as a leader or innovator. So while everyone will question a few omissions, it is pretty hard to question that those there deserve to be there. The real question is, how many will be there next year. The competition in this space gets fiercer and fiercer.)