So why do you let a systems implementor / integrator choose your Sourcing / Procurement system???

And while you might initially believe that this simile is far-fetched, the reality is that it’s very close to home. While a banker is the right partner to help you manage your money, he or she is probably the worst person to figure out the right job for you given that he or she doesn’t really know you. Similarly, while you’re preferred implementation / integration partner is probably the best company out there to implement the platform that will control the majority of your organizational spending, chances are that partner has no knowledge of the true breadth of your Procurement processes work and no clue what the right kind of system for the organization would be. And as a result, just like a banker might steer you towards a job you’d fail miserably at (and lose, leaving you without a pay cheque), an implementor / integrator might steer you towards a system that will not work at all for your organization, and cost your organization millions in the process.

Furthermore, this is also true for any consultancy that has partnerships with a select group of source-to-pay vendors. In fact, taking advice from any of the consultancies that have partnerships with a select group of source-to-pay vendors is MORE risky than an implementation partner without any relationships. Why? Because these consultancies, by way of their partnerships, tend to ONLY recommend their partners because:

1. that’s all they tend to implement, and know, and
2. their partnerships provide them with referral fees, guaranteed services, and / or higher margins (and the senior partners at these consultancies mandate that these options are always recommended)
   

So, if your preferred consulting partner only has relationships with platforms that are primarily for indirect S2P, but your organization is primarily direct S2P, your organization’s chances of getting a good recommendation are zero. That’s right. Zero! (Even worse than a generic systems implementor with no knowledge of the space doing a Google search, coming up with five vendors, and making a random recommendation — at least then you have a 20% chance of getting a good recommendation!)

In other words, if you want a good recommendation, you have to ask a neutral third party, like an analyst firm, a niche consultancy which does not do implementations (and has no partnerships), or a consultancy that uses third party evaluations to provide you with the best recommendations it can, leaving aside any partnerships the consultancy might have. (For example, such a consultancy could license Spend Matters Customer Maps, which are Solution Maps with custom personas defined specific to the client needs, to help your organization identify the best fits and then help your organization with the RFIs to identify the best-of-the-best).

Otherwise, the doctor can pretty much guarantee you’re always going to be recommended vendors A and B (and maybe C) in North America and vendors X and Y (and maybe Z) in Europe … even though there are 8 S2P platforms and dozens of best-of-breed solution providers that might be right for you (as Solution Map ranks over 50 and plans to add many more over time). [Not that A, B, C, X, Y, and Z aren’t good in the right situation — but in S2P, one-size does not fit all — especially when you consider direct vs indirect, product vs service, head vs tail spend, strategic process requirements, optimization and analytics needs, automation, etc. — and the fact that some providers never get recommended even though for certain industries they are usually the best choice.]

So again, unless you want a quick way to triple your losses, don’t let an implementor choose your S2P platform. You choose it, and as per a recent piece of the doctor‘s over on Spend Matters, you take what you want!