Category Archives: Market Intelligence

So You Admit You Might Be a Dead-Company Walking. How Do You Avoid the Graveyard? Part 3

In short, as per Part 1, you

  1. keep admitting to every mistake you are making and do something about it, then
  2. continue by looking for cost-effective opportunities for improvement and pursue them and finally
  3. never, ever, ever forget the timeless basics.

Today, we’ll continue by describing what you do when you identify, and admit to, one of the next two mistakes (mistakes 3 & 4) we chronicled in our two part introduction to our “dead company walking” (Part 1 and Part 2) series (where we helped your potential customers identify problems that signify you are a SaaS supplier they should be walking away from). (You can find Part 2 here.)

3) Shiny New Tech is More Important than Tried and True Methodology

Tried and true ALWAYS trumps shiny new tech in enterprise software. Especially when the total cost of ownership after factoring in license fees, maintenance, hardware & software updates, services, data feeds, integration fees, etc. usually push a solution into the realm of seven figures (and eight figures for large enterprises). Companies want a return, and shiny doesn’t generate a return. So focus on algorithms, processes, and approaches that are guaranteed to yield solutions. Do this by:

i) As THE REVELATOR would say, take an agent-based approach and focus in on what the solution should do

It’s supposed to be people-process-technology (or, in the doctor‘s words, talent-transformation-technology since you should first look for opportunities to improve your processes before investing in technology), not technology-forced workflow-prisoner! When you focus on the tech first and forget the process it is supposed to support and the people who have to use it, you’re never, ever, ever going to get it right. And believing that an over-hyped unproven technology will eventually show emergent behaviour (that it has zero chance of doing because of the underlying technology) and “evolve” to solve the problem is just stupid.

Real tech encodes real solutions identified by real human intelligence that have been implemented, repeatedly verified, tested in real world operating conditions, and understood to the point that the success can be repeated predictably. Sometimes it’s traditional AI, sometimes it’s RPA, sometimes it’s workflow, and sometimes it’s a simple calculation. It all depends on the problem and the people-process combo that can be applied to solve that problem. Tech is only transformative when it supports the business. You don’t lead with tech, you follow.

ii) Then identify the best tech options for each step

Once you have fully documented the problem(s) the people need to solve, the processes they can support, and the solutions that will work acceptably (maybe not perfectly, but it’s rare that a solution is perfect — plus, as we’ve repeatedly indicated, most enterprise users would cry tears of joys if they found something that just worked), identify all the potential tech options at your disposal, from open source to out-of-the-box from third parties to custom development.

Then, for each option, evaluate:

  • it’s cost
  • the relative return (for the customer and how that will translate into sales)

And identify the options with the best balance. You’ll be surprised at how often it’s not the new shiny. The best hotness is the old busted hotness.

iii) Select tried-and-true when all things are equal (and save)

Finally, when all things are equal, go for the most stable, tried-and-true, methodology — don’t do experimental new “AI” development if a sold optimization or analytics-based solution already exists.

4) Over Reliance on Third Party Tech is a Sustainable Business, Especially if its Gen-AI!

Reliance on third party tech, especially that which has not been proven to be on stable ground in the market, is not a good business plan. What do you do if the provider goes bankrupt, or, realizes they are on the path to bankruptcy and turns the tech off? If you have nothing else to pivot to, you go bankrupt too. Not a good scenario!

Even if you are building on tried-and-true stable tech (with a large install base), unless your business plan is to be acquired by the tech you’re building on and you actually have a chance of making that happen (you came from the provider, have good connections, etc.), your options are very, very limited if you don’t succeed.

You need to focus on a solution to a real problem that companies will pay to address first. And while it can be based 100% on third party tech to start, that shouldn’t be the game plan. The plan should be to acquire it, build something better in house, or at least find three or four options that will serve the same function until you can acquire or build appropriate tech. (The exception being a product maintained for you by a third party that is based on open source that will always be there for you to take ownership of and then assign to a new team.)

Once you have a solution, and know what tech you need, do the cost benefit analysis of:

  • licensing someone else’s tech
  • acquiring the third party tech
  • building on, and contributing to, open source
  • building your own

for each aspect of the solution, as well as the points at which one option becomes better.

In addition, even when you select a solution, always keep your eyes out for an alternative that has been demonstrated to be more reliable, efficient, or cost effective. When a problem has been newly identified, some companies will just throw anything at it to see what appears to work, without doing a proper analysis and designing a proper solution from the ground up. Eventually, some smart minds powered by Human Intelligence (HI!) will come up with a better solution. Once that becomes economical, you’ll want to switch to that if you don’t have an equivalent solution in house, while keeping back-up options open.

And definitely don’t (over) rely on third party Gen-AI — even the biggest companies can only afford to bleed for so long. There’s nothing Gen-AI can do that traditional tech can’t. It’s best uses are as an interface layer for (very) low TQ (Technology Quotient) folk who are being forced to use tech but just don’t get it (as a more natural language chatbot interface) or as a massive document store search and summarization solution (when traditional semantic / neural networks would just be overloaded). That’s it. And in all of these cases, it needs an underlying application that actually does the work and manages the data.

Stay tuned for Part 4!

How Do You Say Bye-Bye to DEI Without Customers and Suppliers Going Bye-Bye

DEI is going a lot of blowback. Much of it deservedly so since

  • many initiatives are led by people, who’ve never read a dictionary, that confused “opportunity” with “outcome” (and they’re not the same thing at all),
  • many initiatives are led by people who are misusing DEI to discriminate against unrecognized groups (specifically, religious minorities, white candidates, etc.), and
  • it was so bad in some jurisdictions that it is triggering legal responses (not just board and investor responses).

But ripping it out without a plan or even a thought about the blowback is not a good idea.

First of all,

  • a properly defined initiative is NOT illegal, or even immoral,
  • not all are being used to illegally discriminate against religious minorities or non-minorities, and
  • education can help ensure that a well-defined program is tweaked to be perfectly in alignment with federal and state laws with respect to equal opportunity.

Secondly, just because you’re doing it wrong, doesn’t mean everyone is. As pointed out in this recent opinion article on Supply Chain Dive on how Harley-Davidson’s DEI rollback is a procurement mistake, Harley Davidson’s removal of their support for supplier diversity could be seen as going too far.

And it could be. Ripping out or killing a program that doesn’t work, and then publicly stating that you’re instead going to focus on complying with all state and federal equal opportunity legislation, especially if that’s what customers want is definitely a good thing. (If you’re not convinced, read Jason Busch’s article on why Harley Davidson Dumping Supplier Diversity is more-or-less a good thing.

But you want supplier diversity to the extent there are diverse suppliers that can support your business. It may be your right to buy from who you want, when you want, where you want, and how you want, but if it upsets your supplier base, that’s a problem. Especially if your best suppliers walk away, or, even worse, walk away and sue you. Just like you need happy customers, you need happy suppliers. Plus, a good policy encourages diversity, it doesn’t mandate it when one supplier is inferior to another.

Moreover, even if the DEI program is not working, killing it too fast can also result in customer blowback who might think that you are not about equal opportunity and diversity. It’s a tricky situation, and any action needs to be well thought out, including any potential blowback and how you respond to it in a matter that dispels it before it snowballs.

So You Admit You Might Be a Dead-Company Walking. How Do You Avoid the Graveyard? Part 2

In short, as per Part 1, you

  1. keep admitting to every mistake you are making and do something about it, then
  2. continue by looking for cost-effective opportunities for improvement and pursue them and finally
  3. never, ever, ever forget the timeless basics.

Today, we’ll continue by describing what you do when you identify, and admit to, the second mistake we chronicled in our two part introduction to our “dead company walking” (Part 1 and Part 2) series (where we helped your potential customers identify problems that signify you are a SaaS supplier they should be walking away from).

2) A Shiny Exterior is More Important Than a Modern Engine

i ) Flip Your Focus from UX first to Solution First

Too many companies right now think the “lack of adoption” problem is a lack of usability problem because all their founders knew was SAP Ariba or monolithic Jaggaer or decade old GEP smart, which aren’t the most usable of applications for certain tasks, and definitely not usable by anyone but core buyers.

Many successful companies have been started, grown, and acquired or merged into bigger companies for the past two decades to be better, easier, and/or more affordable than SAP Ariba, Emptoris (acquired by IBM, sunset in 2017, one of the first big players), Jaggaer (which was SciQuest until the 2017 rebranding), Coupa, etc (including Procuri, acquired by Ariba; Iasta, acquired by Selectica, merged with b-Pack, rebranded Determine, acquired by Corcentric; EC Sourcing, acquired BidMode then was acquired by Simfoni, etc.). And ten times as many have started for the same reasons and no longer exist (without [nearly as] successful exits). Usability is only part of the problem.

For an application to be adopted it has to

  • be easy to use to the point where it
  • is easier and faster to use it than to circumvent it
    (or to keep doing what the user is doing now) and, most importantly,
  • solve the user’s core problem.

This last reason is why a lot of fake-take, sorry, intake, solutions are going to be ultimately abandoned. Simply making it easy for a user to request something and then showing an animated graphic of the request being forwarded to Bob and then, the next day, showing an animated Bob opening the request once he’s read it DOES NOT solve a user’s problem where they need a product or service to do their job. Unless the platform allows Bob to process and fulfill that request more efficiently and effectively than the current methodology, and, most importantly, gives full visibility into what actions Bob has and is currently undertaking, along with an ETD of when the user will have the request fulfilled, the intake application is worse than not having anything at all. This is because the user still has to message or call Bob to find out what’s going on until Bob manually indicates that he has accepted the request, fulfilled the request, and when (and where) the product or service will arrive.

ii) Design Open API first with full data and process control

Everyone focuses on the UX and UI first because that’s what the users (and executives) see, believing that a great demo will get them the sale. And while, sadly, it will get them some sales from executives with no Tech IQ whatsoever, it doesn’t mean it will get them the renewal, especially after the product fails to be adopted because it doesn’t actually let the users work the way they need to work.

It’s not the UI, it’s the ability to capture the data and run the processes in an acceptable manner, and this is not possible if the UI or workflow is wrong. And you’ll never get it (completely) right the first time. But if you build a solid backend that is fully (Open) API driven for data and process control, it will be easy to programmatically alter the workflow, and modify or rebuild the UI (with external help who won’t even have to know more than the API calls) later to be more appropriate.

Too many companies sacrifice a proper software foundation in their rush to MVP and a sale, and this is what cripples them (sometimes to the point of failure). Think of building software like building a real building. If you only build the foundation for a 2 story house, you’ll never be able to build a 20 story apartment building. But if you build the foundation for a 20 story apartment building, you can build out 2 stories of units to start, sell those, and then build out the rest (when you can show off the demo units and drum up a lot of interest).

iii) Then Design a UX on top that customers use – with their help

Work with beta customers, plural, on enhancements and new modules and get their input on what their core processes are and what would make a UI more usable. While you should never design for any specific customer, you should design to meet the 80% common needs, and, where possible, include as many configuration / customization options in the product (workflow and data collection) as possible (but not the codebase, it has to be software switches, you don’t want multiple code branches in production, ever).

Your chances of success improve greatly if multiple customers will say it solves their problems and they use it daily. It’s not about them loving it, it’s about them using it. That’s the key.

iv) If extra $$$ remain, farm out the eye candy development

It doesn’t hurt to have the application look new and shiny, but that’s secondary to having it work in a modern fashion that will leave your new users with tears of joy the first time they use it (because they thought that no solution could tackle their complex procurement, sourcing, logistics, new product design, supplier management, etc. challenges). So if you have a few extra dollars, once you’ve figured everything out about usability and configurability, then you can hire a UX guru to make it sparkle. (But always remember that a solution that actually works shines on its own.)

Stay tuned for Part 3!

Procurement Is NOT Hard — But You Do Need The Right System! (Part 3)

At the end of Part 2, we noted that the major problems Procurement folk are having that are causing many to proclaim that Procurement is too complex have been solved for over a decade (and, in fact, there are old grey beards that successfully solved them two decades ago with the right systems, integrations, configurations, and customizations when first generation systems were a lot less capable than today’s third generation systems).

We told you that there were quite a few third-generation true SaaS e-Procurement systems built from the ground up since the 2010s that provide an organization with

  • full visibility and organization wide access
  • full core Procurement process support
  • usability by the average Procurement Pro (and not just tech wizards)

And all you had to do was find one. (There are over 666 Solution Providers out there, many of which have been reasonably well covered here on SI in the Vendor Post Index and Archives.)

To help you with that, you can search the archives for hundreds of posts on what you

But, since the marketing madmen and consulting con-men are playing up the complexity and playing on your fears, hear are a few tips on how to get started on identifying the right solutions from the right vendors for your RFP:

  • start with mapping the essentials of your everyday processes; the 80/20! if you can automate the 80%, you will have the manpower to deal with the fringe cases if the system can’t support them
  • look for vendors with business understanding, not just technical gurus (it doesn’t matter how great they are, if they don’t understand Procurement, how can they build a Procurement system?)
  • look for solutions that not only solve the 80%, but for a vendor that can configure the solution to support and enable the process your people have to do multiple times a day every day while doing the 80%; you can always get consulting help or another system if the 20% is really that difficult, important, or valuable

While the process could be very involved to select the right vendor, the process to narrow down the vendors are not — if the potential vendor doesn’t understand your use cases, can’t show you how to enable them efficiently and effectively (in an improved process that your team members not only can, but want to use), or can’t convince you it’s at least the 80%, roll on.

But trust us when we say the solutions are out there to solve the vast majority of your Procurement problems, and do so in a relatively simple manner. No complexity required!

Procurement Is NOT Hard — But You Do Need The Right System! (Part 2)

As we ended off in Part 1, nothing about the Procurement process is complex, because, as we said, the foundations of Procurement and Purchasing haven’t changed since the first manual was published 137 years ago, its just that more steps were added and, more importantly, the introduction of bad Procurement systems that took a simple, but involved, process and turned it into a nightmare.

It is upon these nightmares, and the fears they inspire, that the marketing madmen and consulting con-men are playing up the madness, and, even worse, vendors with new systems with no real functionality, a slick UI and easy organization-wide SaaS access are promising to reduce the complexity when all their system does is increase the visibility into the utter lack of capability these all sizzle and no steak intake/orchestrate/easy-punchout systems offer.

The reality is that while many of the first, and some of the second-generation, monolith systems didn’t give a lot of visibility beyond the requisition, or only did if you bought licenses for everyone who needed to make a req (so they could have full read access system wide, which, of course, made the system too expensive for any but a F500/G3000; for e.g. Coupa was designed since its launch on Procurement Independence Day to allow anyone in the organization to do Procurement and have complete visibility into where every req is at all times, but the Coupa model is pay by seat and the platform requires user accounts to configure the right visibility access across the platform).

However, most of the true SaaS e-Procurement systems that were built from the ground up in the 2010s were built with full visibility and organization wide access in mind, mitigating the need for these modern intake systems. First problem solved.

Second, these systems were built from the ground up to support the processes a Procurement Department needs to actually do real Procurement. Second problem solved.

Third, the best systems were designed to be usable and make Procurement easier than doing it by hand (but they had to be properly selected and configured). Third problem solved.

And these problems have been solved for over a decade. For example, Vroozi met all these requirements a decade ago. (And they aren’t the only ones!) You just have to look beyond the same-old, same-old big suites that are covered by the same old analyst firms year-over-year, and the marketing madness being pumped out on a daily basis by the new age sizzle that raised way too much money and hired way too little intelligence. If you look beyond the hype, you’ll find there are quite a few smaller, quieter vendors out there that have been working hard for years to build real tech that solves real problems in a really usable way — solutions that are also affordable (because if you don’t raise too much money, you don’t have to raise the price tag ridiculously either to generate the returns needed to keep your jobs and the costs of the inflated marketing and sales budgets). (And remember, there are more vendors than you think. Likely 646 more vendors. With hundreds covered on SI over the past eighteen years, summarized in the Vendor Post Index and Vendor Posts Archives as well as hundreds more covered by the doctor over on Spend Matters between ’16 and ’22 IF you have a Content Hub subscription.)

You just need to know what to look for.