In yesterday’s post we pointed out you need to be very, very careful what advice you take from consultancies, large and small alike, who aren’t really expert in modern Supply Management processes, best practices, and technologies.

Yesterday’s post covered a recent piece (from a mere two months ago) on Sourcing and Purchasing Transformation that provided such bad advice for weathering the rough seas ahead that we were serious when we said the advice was equivalent to sailing right into the heart of the Bermuda Triangle in the middle of a category 5 hurricane! Maybe the advice was good in the 80’s when everything was home or near-shored, innovation was slow, the economy was more stagnant, and cutting cost to the bone was the only way to survive. But that was then. This is now. Three decades later. And anyone still peddling that advice in today’s fast moving, outsourced, global economy is seriously out of it (or trying to create more work than they can handle by putting in peril any supply management organization that actually takes that advice).

But we digress. Today’s rant is about the Big 6 / 8 and their dangerously low understanding of S2P technology and their unfounded (and unfathomable) belief that you can somehow measure capability and/or innovation based upon market value, customer count, or investment dollars.

For instance, the doctor was just sent a brand-new paper by ATK on The Future of Procurement Technology and how Mediocrity is No Longer Acceptable (and it is NOT) by the way, where they correctly noted that

1. Today’s Procurement Technology is a Failure
   which it generally is as most solutions that have been implemented don’t give a full view of spend, don’t address many of the day to day needs, and, frankly, just don’t work
2. Suites are Problematic
   as most are built through acquisition and all the components don’t really talk or sync
3. Most solutions are archaic, rigid, and poorly thought out
   and push users into the wrong decision and
4. A revolution is coming

… but not all fighters are created equal!

In particular, they name eleven (11) companies that represent the most current and advanced technologies, but their is almost no comparison between the extremes they represent.

For example, even though Scout has the fourth largest investment raise of all the companies listed, it’s one of the weakest offerings in the list. And even though LevaData is one of the lowest raises, it’s one of the strongest offerings.

And while you can barely compare the likes of Scout and Bonfire (traditional e-Negotiation based Sourcing with a much better UX than last generation systems), who have the lowest solution scores on the (deep) Spend Matters Sourcing SolutionMap, to the likes of LevaData, Suplari, Supplier.ai and Xeeva (who are bringing in the era of Cognitive Sourcing and Procurement), there’s just no comparison to the likes of tamr (with its advanced machine learning capabilities for which there are few equals) and Concord (which is in the field of contract automation).

Plus, when it comes to contracts, consider what the likes of Seal and Exari are doing. Moreover, when it comes to analytics, don’t discount Coupa AI-Classification (formerly Spend 360) or AnyData. And why are there no true optimization vendors on the list like Coupa CSO (formerly Trade Extensions TESS) or Keelvar, that is trying to apply AI to true optimization-backed Sourcing. And when it comes to Supplier Discovery, Supplier.ai is one option, but Tealbook is another.

In other words, they have some names. They have some investment figures. They have some insight that each is doing something different, that each is trying to revolutionize something about the industry, but no real insight into what the core of the difference is or the strengths they bring.

And while this may not seem too dangerous, as they aren’t really reporting each is equal, just that each is revolutionary, in the hands of a half-wit, or even worse, someone with an incomplete understanding of tech and best practice, they could take this as a guidebook to the best vendors, and, in the end, select the absolute worst vendor for them. One has to remember it’s not just about revolution, or even evolution, it’s about the platform that solves the Procurement department’s greatest needs. Today. And when the needs are met, the platform that offers the greatest flexibility and power for the organization with respect to their goals.