Three years ago we reminded you of one of Mark Twain’s most insightful sayings:
Whenever you find yourself on the side of majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
The majority is still happy with the status quo. Still accepting the word of Gartner as Gospel. And accepting the word of vendors that they have a fully functioning, value-generating, feature-complete 3.0 Procurement platform and well on their way to the 4.0 Procurement platform that they’ve been hiring experts to talk about at all of their events over the last year (when nothing could be further from the truth).
That’s why the doctor is pushing forward with Spend Matters on Solution Maps — the only maps in the space that are bias free. The analyst rating is 100% tech weightings on a well-defined scale to beyond market average. The customer rating is 100% unbiased customer ratings as the analysts don’t talk to the customers filling out the surveys (at least not until they’ve filled the surveys out). (Psychologists have proven the way you ask questions leads the customers to specific biases in their responses and scorings, and we avoid that with out methodology.) It doesn’t mix six different measurements, half of which are completely subjective, on an axis like other analyst reports.
That’s also why the doctor still has sponsorships suspended — he won’t entertain any pay-to-play relationships and he’s not about to abandon the educational goals this blog was started on. He’s slowed down a bit, but that’s just because he’s waiting to see how the market is going to shake-out as a result of this M&A frenzy and how you will have to adapt your processes and strategies to be successful. (In the interim, the vast majority of the 5,600 posts in the archive have education that is still as relevant as ever.)
So, for now, just hold tight