Category Archives: Serious

Proud To Be Fox News Free!

Especially since a recent “study confirms that fox news makes you stupid”! (Fark.com)

Check out this recent article on AlterNet that describes a survey conducted at the University of Maryland that found that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources and that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation. Wow!

This is scary considering that 85.7 Million Americans watch Fox News every month (source: TV by the Numbers). That’s 27.5% of the population being misinformed every day!

And before you go dismissing the study, read the article in full as it also mentions a previous study by the University of Maryland and a Wall Street Journal poll that found the same results. As a result, the
conclusion is inescapable. Fox News is deliberately misinforming its viewers and it is doing so for a reason. Every [reported] issue above is one in which the Republican Party had a vested interest.

That’s why Sourcing Innovation is, and will continue to be (as our gift to you), Fox News Free! Happy holidays and happy new year!

Why You Should Listen to the Great Wil Wheaton

Simply put, Evil Wil Wheaton is the best villain ever.

Now, while I’m not an English Literature major, I am a great researcher and after doing my research on what makes a great villain, and using the web to harness the wisdom of crowds (via the mighty Google), I believe I have a reasonably good understanding of what makes a great villain and why Evil Wil Wheaton, who shows up regularly on Big Bang Theory is the best villain ever.

Simply put, a good villain should be:

  • real
    Evil Wil Wheaton is a regular guy like you and me. He’s not a fictional superhero or a larger than life immortal that we know to be fictional deep down.
  • confident
    Evil Wil Wheaton know’s he’s the man.
  • unyielding
    He never lets up. Year after year he maintains his superiority over Sheldon Lee Cooper, our protagonist on the Big Bang Theory.
  • charismatic and manipulative
    Never has there been a villain more charming. With the exception of our protagonist, every one loves him.
  • self-serving
    He makes up a story about his grandmother to beat the protagonist in a card game in his first appearance.
  • enigmatic and fascinating
    You can see Evil Wil Wheaton shining through in Fawkes, the antagonist to the heroine Codex in The Guild.
  • a hero in his/her own right
    When the protagonist steals the new release of Raiders of the Lost Ark with 21 additional seconds in his third encounter, Evil Wil Wheaton organizes the lynch mob.
  • complex and deep
    You know there’s more to Evil Wil Wheaton than meets the eye.
  • attractive and seductive
    If Evil Wil Wheaton qualified for People’s sexiest man alive list, even though I have no idea what makes a man sexy, I have a suspicion he’d be there.

and, most importantly, he or she should:

  • own the hero’s backside
    When he goes head to head with the protagonist in his second appearance, it’s obvious that he just own’s the hero’s backside.

So what’s the point of all this?

Simply put, you should listen to the words of the one and only Wil Wheaton when he speaks. When he says you should spend more time back in the analog world, even if only for a few hours a day, he couldn’t be closer to the truth. Take Wil’s Word. You’ll be happier for it.

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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

  • “Emptoris Empower Kicks Off — What’s on My Mind to Focus on?”What to ask? What to ask?
  • “Emptoris Empower Dispatch: Emptoris is Thriving — But What’s Behind the Numbers?”They claimed 91% “booking sales” growth in the first half of this year, and that a lot of new business is from “channel partners”.
  • “Friday Rant: Emptoris Echos — Cloudy With a Chance of Software”Emptoris takes to the clouds with echOS — is a cloud-based delivery system built to streamline the deployment and management of Emptoris solutions.

Procurement Leaders

  • “Emptoris Empower: procurement’s moments of engagement”Geoffrey Moore’s keynote got everyone excited.
  • “Emptoris Empower: beating the benefits drop-off”Patrick Echkhert’s presentation (on behalf of Cardinal Health) made a great point, implementations have to revolve around a sustainable savings/benefits plan.
  • “Emptoris Empower: the case for mastering risk”Accenture’s Randall Moore explained how becoming a risk master leads to real returns and that technology and talent investments can pay for themselves 8-fold when you reach a level of mastery.

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

  • “Emptoris 2010 Customer Event- An Anticipated Report of Glowing Progress”The management team has been clearly focused on getting closer to customer needs, while making implementation of its technology easier for customer to navigate and manage.
  • “Emptoris Empower 2010 Customer Event- Summary Impressions”Over 100 customers went live with Emptoris applications this year. Emptoris signed a global agreement with SAP regarding the use of SAP Business Objects technology for business intelligence reporting and analysis needs across the Emptoris suite of applications. A new and transformed management team.

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!