Category Archives: Serious

Empower? Or Incitement?

It’s that time of year when Emptoris holds their annual conference, invites all the bloggers (but me) to their peace pipe pow-wow, and somehow stirs them into a blogging frenzy which results in the temporary flooding of the bitstream with post after post about Emptoris. It wouldn’t be so bad if we got good information out of it. However, possibly due to the “selective reporting” favored by members of the previous management team, this hasn’t been the case historically.

And while it does look like the new team is working harder at being open and communicating (except where financials are concerned, but it’s certainly better to share nothing at all then inflate the numbers by 20M), despite the flurry of activity over the last few days (which likely isn’t the end), we haven’t received much in the way of useful information yet, and, more importantly, it looks like most of the bloggers (except Bob) have missed the only point that matters. But first, a recap of the stories to date:

Spend Matters

Procurement Leaders

Gartner (Debbie Wilson)

  • Dispatch From Emptoris Empower 2010

    $2 million investment in its data center infrastructure. Some procurement friends expressed frustration with gaps in functionality that aren’t being addresses quickly enough.

Supply Chain Matters

That last point is key, if you happened to catch one of Wednesday’s press releases, you’ll see that Emptoris added three new senior executives. Add this to the number of new executives the new CEO has brought in since his arrival, and you’ll see that the current management team is almost entirely new. At this point, he’s only a few executives away from an entirely new management team (and I will be thrilled the day it’s entirely new). This will be the key to their success (or failure) in the future.

In my view, Emptoris’ biggest problem historically has been their management team, which appeared to be hand-picked by the former CEO to mirror his corporate philosophy (and never challenge his way of doing things) — which obviously wasn’t the right one for Emptoris (because, if it was, why did they never truly make profitability and need yet another funding round last year just to stay afloat, almost 9 years after formation?). I hope the new team maintains the “get close to the customer and figure out what they need” strategy. In this economy, I think that’s your only chance of success.

Why You Might Not Want A Check-Up By the doctor

One of the regular features on Sourcing Innovation are vendor solution reviews, which occur only after the doctor has seen the product. Normally occurring in the spring and fall, these vendor posts, which provide solution providers with a great opportunity to reach a broad global audience, are always well received. But not all vendors who receive a demo invitation accept. For a while now, I’ve been trying to figure out the most likely reasons why. These are the best I could come up with:

  • 5. The product doesn’t exist.
  • 4. The product doesn’t work.
  • 3. The product works completely differently than the marketing spin around it.
  • 2. A discussion of the product’s capabilities “gives too much away” to competitors.
  • 1. the doctor is distrusted for some reason.

As far as 3,4,5 are concerned, no legitimate vendor in our space is selling snake oil or moonshine. All the products work, and accomplish some significant fraction of their mission. So that can’t be it.

With regard to 2, companies should understand that their competitors know them well, perhaps better than they know themselves. Nothing that the doctor might say is going to give away any secrets.

Finally, with regard to 1, the doctor has never slammed a company with a product that accomplished its designated task reasonably well, especially when the company is open about its strengths and weaknesses. The Sourcing Innovation vendor post archives prove this, far better than any claim I could make here.

So, vendors, what are you waiting for? Let’s share your accomplishments this fall with the highly targeted audience that constitutes the readership of Sourcing Innovation!

One … One Home Foreclosure …

Somehow, I don’t think even the Count is laughing now. After all, I’m sure his mansion is on the foreclosure list too.

That’s why I find this recent announcement from Sesame Workshop on it’s upcoming special on Families Standing Together: Feeling Secure in Tough Times both humorous and frightening at the same time.

In today’s economic climate, approximately two out of three middle class families are at high risk of sustaining or losing their economic security. Moreover, increases in job loss and income cuts have made families struggle with basic costs like housing, medical care, transportation, food, clothing, and child care. Too often, parents are being forced to make difficult decisions that affect their children’s well-being.

In response to these recent changes in family economics, Sesame Street has produced, in association with David Letterman’s production company Worldwide Pants Incorporated and Lookalike Productions, a new PBS primetime special that aims to help families with children, ages two to eight, experiencing difficult economic circumstances by offering strategies and tips that can lead to positive outcomes for their children’s physical and emotional well-being during this tough economic climate which will air on PBS on September 9 and feature Grover and Elmo.

I just hope “rich-poor” doesn’t replace “near-far” as classic Grover.

O.M.G. R.O.T.F.L “D.T.I.:E.D.I.S.C.S.P.U.C.R.T.A.” … W.T.F? Y.M.H.S? *

* Oh My God! Rolling on the floor laughing! “Distinguishing the Indistinguishable: Exploring Differences in Supply Chain Software Packages Using Centering Resonance Text Analysis” What the f*ck? You mean he’s serious?

One of the presentations I just had to sit in on at the 5th Annual International Symposium on Supply Chain Management was called “Distinguishing the Indistinguishable: Exploring Differences in Supply Chain Software Packages Using Centering Resonance Text Analysis” because I had to figure out whether it was real, or the organizer’s attempt at introducing some comic relief into a symposium that can get a little heady without a break once in a while.

Here’s the abstract: Distinguishing among large supply chain management (SCM) software packages is difficult due to the complexity and breadth of the software. In this paper, we use text mining tools to perform a comparative analysis of documentation covering the seven most popular supply chain software packages (from SAP, i2, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Manhattan Associates, IBS, and Manugistics). Concept maps created for each of the packages indicate a high degree of similarity among the 20 most influential concepts, yet significant differences exist beyond the top 20 concepts. This suggests that any distinguishing features are deeply buried in the documentation, while at a surface level all seven vendors address the same concepts. The resultant concept maps contribute a more precise understanding of the similarities and differences between SCM software packages. Guidelines for using this knowledge to make more rational and informed software selection decisions are discussed.

Before continuing, you should read it again just to make sure you read it right. (Because I know you’re wondering if you did.)

Now you should take thirty to sixty seconds to process the shock of what you just read. The resultant concept maps contribute a more precise understanding of the similarities and differences between SCM software packages. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. However, having attended the presentation, and, more importantly, found out that ( a ) this paper is getting published and ( b ) some of the audience members thought that this is a fantastic idea, I now know I should be instilled with fear!

The reality is that I can barely wrap my head around everything that is wrong with the abstract, let alone the presentation, and, more importantly, the paper that the presentation is backed on. However, knowing me as you do, you know I’m going to give it my best.

  • There is not necessarily any correlation between documentation about any given platform and the platform itself. The documentation could be help documentation, which might have a moderate correlation, but could just as easily be position papers, analyst reviews, or “what’s missing” analysis that does not necessarily have to have any correlation with the software.
  • Even if the documentation is limited to help documentation, the documentation is still going to focus on how to use the system and not how it solves your supply chain problem. Thus, the most common terms could be “drop-down” and “dialog” and “field” … not at all useful.
  • There is not a one-to-one correlation between a word and a concept or a concept and a word. Let’s take the word order. It could be referring to order placement or order management or order fulfillment or to the ordering of options in a text-box. Also, let’s take the concept of order fulfillment. It could be called order fulfillment or it could be called customer delivery.
  • There’s no guarantee that two products that implement the same features will document them with standard terminology, or even document the features at all! Thus, two products with high correlations in capability are not at all guaranteed to have any correlation at all in documented capability.

I could go on, but you can see that the statement that the resultant concept maps contribute a more precise understanding of the similarities and differences between SCM software packages is absolutely ludicrous, even if centering resonance text analysis did what many researchers claim it can do. (It really can’t, but hopefully the linguist at the conference who also had more problems with this presentation and paper than I can easily count will chime in with a comment on everything I missed.)

Now, apparently, after heated discussions with one of the researchers (and presenter) in question (who will not be named to protect the guilty), I have it all wrong, and what I’m assuming is being stated is not being stated at all, but I believe I have a relatively high degree of comprehension of the English language, and I just do not understand how any rational human being could interpret it in any other way.

“It’s the thought that counts … and so far I’m up to zero.”
  Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report, Sept 25, 2007