Source-to-Pay+ is Extensive (P29) … Breaking down the ORA of Sourcing, Concluding with Optimization

In our first post, Part 26, we noted that, after covering e-Procurement, Spend Analysis, Supplier Management, and Contract Management, it was finally time for Strategic Sourcing. When it comes to Sourcing, we have to deal with the ORA et labora. The work, and the prayer (that it gets the results we want). But at least when it comes to the prayer, we have three tools at our disposal:

  • Optimization
  • RFX
  • Auction

In Part 27 we started with the most classic sourcing tool, RFX, where RFX stands for Request for X, where X could be Bid, Information, Proposal, Quote, etc. depending on the depth of response required and the terminology used in the industry and geography the RFX is being issued in.

Then, in our last post, Part 28, we continued with the primary alternative to RFX, e-Auction. In e-Auction, instead of asking for quotes which will be reviewed in a long, detailed, often weighted process, you’re asking for real-time quotes in an online auction where you can update your bids until you self-select to drop out.

The last tool at our disposal, which does require bids to be collected first (which does not need to be through RFX or e-Auction but can be done through every buyer’s favourite tool, Excel), is strategic sourcing decision optimization. It’s not used nearly enough considering that it will practically always identify a lower cost scenario, and even if you find the lowest cost scenario impractical, you understand exactly how much more a relationship is costing you and you are quantifying how much a better relationship, better quality, lower risk is worth to you and can make more informed, and better, decisions in the future.

BASIC

Pillar #1: Solid Mathematical Foundations
The algorithms used must be sound (mathematically correct in all situations) and complete (capable of analyzing all possible solutions). An optimization engine based on Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) would qualify as hybrid simplex approaches will provably converge on an optimal answer given sufficient time (and one can always compute a maximum distance from optimal based upon the calculations done to date since the longer the algorithm churns for, the more the lower bound on the optimal solution increases). In contrast, the application of many heuristic, simulation, or evolutionary approaches are likely not valid since the majority of these techniques do not guarantee full exploration of the potential solution space and, therefore, aren’t guaranteed to find the true optimal solution (although they may get close).

Pillar #2: True Cost Modelling
The model must allow you to define the full cost model, not just one (or two) fixed costs. For example, if a buyer is sourcing direct material, the platform must allow the buyer to include all indirect and incurred costs, such as freight, tariff, storage, processing, and marketing differential costs in the definition of the cost model.

Pillar #3: Sophisticated Constraint Analysis
The model must allow the buyer to build a model that capture a realistic approximation of real world constraints. If the business must select at least 2 suppliers, will not accept a product mix with an average quality or reliability of less than 8 (/ 10), if a supplier has a maximum capacity, or if a minimum allocation must be given to an incumbent because of a contract still in play, all this needs to be captured.

A strategic sourcing decision optimization platform must support four core constraint types. Capacity constraints that define a supplier (‘s location) capacity limit. An allocation constraint that defines a minimum or maximum allocation to a supplier (group) based upon existing contracts or business policies. Risk Mitigation constraints that ensure that business policies on supplier or geographic splits designed to reduce risk are captured. Qualitative constraints that allow for qualitative ratings such as reliability, quality, relative sustainability, etc. on a mathematical (e.g. 1 to 10) scale to be defined.

Pillar #4: What If Capability
The platform must support the creation of multiple what-if scenarios, each with different constraints. Buyers should be able to create them from scratch, or as modified copies of existing what-if scenarios.

Out-of-the-Box Scenarios
The solution should contain multiple out of the box scenario definitions, including unconstrained, x-supplier, incumbent, etc. that automatically generate these what-if scenarios for the bids being evaluated for optimization.

Scenario Comparison
The solution must contain a built-in capability for (side-by-side) scenario comparison that allows a buyer to easily see the cost differentials and get a feeling for what each scenario is costing them.

ADVANCED

Integrated Analytics
Optimization models take exponential time to solve. While small models can solve in minutes, and even seconds, on a high powered multi-core machine, large models can take hours or days. The key to rapid model solution is minimizing model size. This can often be done by way of a preliminary analysis that determines that some supplier bids are just to high to ever be acceptable, some qualitative factors too low to ever be acceptable, and some supplier locations are in geographic regions that are just too risky. Eliminating award possibilities that will never be made can drastically decrease model size and solution time.

Constraint Relaxation
If a model is unsolvable, but could be solved by solved with lesser constraints, the platform should be able to identify which (near) minimal constraint set is preventing a solution and identify which (minimal) relaxations would allow a solution and present those to the user, who can accept them, or use that as input for defining an alternate relaxed model that may permit a solution. (Remember best practice is to prioritize constraints and add them incrementally until the model becomes unsolvable as that allows you to always choose the least important constraints to relax for solvability.)

Sensitivity Analysis
In optimization, a sensitivity analysis tells you how dependent a solution is on a certain constraint and what the impact of removing the constraint that is currently preventing a lower cost solution in terms of hard dollars. (For example, insisting an incumbent supplier get 50% of the award might be costing you $10 Million in a $100 Million category, while reducing the minimum to 25% might only cost you $2 Million [as it the supplier is more competitive on some products than others].)

Hard and Soft Constraints
The platform should allow you to define constraints as hard and soft. When a model is unsolvable and needs to be relaxed, the solution will only allow soft constraints to be relaxed. Furthermore, it should also allow for an indication of when a soft constraint can be relaxed. For example, average quality can only be reduced from 9 to 8 if the savings increases by at least 3%.

Integrated Freight Model Support
In addition to supporting true cost modelling, the platform should also have built in freight models that understands transport types and modes (truck vs rail, refrigerated vs dry, etc.) and allow for the easy definition of complex freight models when those models might allow for overall lower costs of ownership when carrier bids are also included in the model.

Of course, this is not a complete list of what a strategic sourcing decision optimization platform might have, or necessarily should have, as systems continue to improve, but a baseline of what they must have to be considered a modern solution.

Next up: the vendor list in Part 30.

Source-to-Pay+ is Extensive (P28) … Breaking down the ORA of Sourcing, Continuing with (e-)Auctions

In our first post, Part 26, we noted that, after covering e-Procurement, Spend Analysis, Supplier Management, and Contract Management, it was finally time for Strategic Sourcing. When it comes to Sourcing, we have to deal with the ORA et labora. The work, and the prayer (that it gets the results we want). But at least when it comes to the prayer, we have three tools at our disposal:

  • Optimization
  • RFX
  • Auction

Yesterday, in Part 27, we started with the most classic sourcing tool, RFX, where RFX stands for Request for X, where X could be Bid, Information, Proposal, Quote, etc. depending on the depth of response required and the terminology used in the industry and geography the RFX is being issued in.

The primary alternative to RFX is e-Auction. In e-Auction, instead of asking for quotes which will be reviewed in a long, detailed, often weighted process, you’re asking for real-time quotes in an online auction where a supplier can update its bids until it self-selects to drop out of the auction.

BASIC

Lot Configuration
Just like surveys were so fundamental and obvious for an RFX solution that you’d think we shouldn’t even need to mention it, lots are so necessary to e-Auctions that we shouldn’t have to mention it either. But while you should trust a solution has configurable lots, you should always verify you can configure and manipulate the lots to suit your needs and your preferred lotting structures for category-based auctions.

Saved Market Baskets
Just like an RFX should support templates so you don’t have to re-create a survey from scratch every time, the e-Auction platform should allow you to define saved market baskets which represent pre-defined lots that can quickly be adjusted as need to set up events quickly. If a category is always sourced in a similar fashion, and the products / services the organization sources don’t change much over time, then a senior buyer should be able to pre-define a market basket for quick lot initiation.

Multiple Auction Types
There are multiple types of auctions — and the system should support a number of formats that may include standard reverse, sealed-bid, reserve-price, fixed price, Japanese, Brazilian, Vickrey, English, Dutch, and Yankee.

Supplier-Specific Views
A supplier should only see the lots they are invited to bid on, should only see the public messages and private messages sent to them, should see everything in a view localized to them, and so on.

Substitution Support
Sometimes a supplier has multiple products that can meet a buyer’s need, or sometimes has an alternate SKU that they believe would also work for the buyer (that requested a specific SKU be bid on) that the supplier could provide at higher quantity, higher quality, or lower cost that the supplier would also like to present. The platform should allow a supplier to define one or more substitutions for each product in a lot that the buyer can choose to consider, or not.

Proxy Support
The internet, like any other system, is not perfect — routers can fail, lines can be cut, providers can temporarily go offline, and so on — it’s as fault tolerant as anything we’ve ever designed in tech, but that doesn’t mean everyone has access all the time. A supplier should be able to define a lead bidder and multiple, ordered, proxies who can take over if the lead bidder cannot connect, or loses connection. The system should allow multiple proxies to be logged in at the same time, but only the lead bidder, or, in the lead bidder’s absence, the highest ranking proxy should be able to bid and every other proxy should be view only.

Messaging
The system must support real time chat with each supplier bidder who has a question as well as group-based broadcast messaging.

ADVANCED

Formula-Based Pricing and/or Bid Modification
Just like a modern RFX solution should support should-cost models, a modern e-Auction solution should support formula based pricing to allow for easy bidding during a short-time frame auction. For example, reduce all bids by 1%, the product cost is x + y% of the current commodity cost for steel per ounce (as the supplier will be buying steel at market price), etc.

Extensive Formatting
An auction, especially one with a short time-frame, needs to be extremely comprehensible to the supplier. As a result, the solution should support extensive formatting so the supplier display can be designed to be as comprehensible, and if necessary, as minimal as possible. This goes beyond just matching a colour scheme, but altering table formats, graphs, defining alternate views, and so on.

Asynchronous Real-Time Graphical Views
If there are lot of items in the lot, or a lot of suppliers in the auction, it can be difficult to understand tabular bids, assuming the bid is not blind, even if the tables are modified to tell a supplier their rank (and some indication of how much they have to bid to go up a rank). It’s often easier for a supplier to understand the current bid situation with a graph, that should automatically update after every bid.

Real Time Supplier Connectivity Monitoring
The platform should continuously monitor whether a bidder is (still) online. Due to the fact that the internet is not perfect, a bidder could lose connection at any time. The platform needs to detect this and if a bidder drops, automatically invite and promote a proxy, and if multiple bidders drop, assume there is a major connectivity problem and suspend the auction for a predefined time, or until the buyer selects a new time.

Constraint Support
A modern e-Auction platform should also support the definition of constraints on the bidding. Minimum decrements, floors, all or nothing on lots, and so on.

Of course, this is not a complete list of what an e-Auction platform might have, or necessarily should have, as systems continue to improve, but a baseline of what they must have to be considered a modern e-Auction solution.

Hi-ho, Hi-ho, now it’s time for “O” in Part 29.

Five Easy Mistakes Source-to-Pay Tech Buyers Can Avoid

For every win you hear about (usually in the form of some ridiculous “we saved X Million thanks to Big S2P Suite Installation“, but that’s a rant for another day), there’s always someone muttering under their breath how their Source-to-Pay module or suite was a partial to complete failure. The reality is that any tech solution, no matter how good it may be for someone else, can be a dud for you if you aren’t careful about selecting the right type of solution from the right vendor.

That’s one of the reasons we are doing a large (initially 33 part) series on Source-to-Pay right now, so that you get an understanding of what each core module should do, and could do, can figure out what modules you need now, and identify the core features that are a must have. This isn’t the full picture, and we can’t provide the rest of it in just a single post (and have written dozens on the subject in the past), but we can outline five mistakes that, if avoided, greatly increase your chances of (great) success.

Lack of understanding of the real value proposition from tech

This is probably the biggest, and the main reason we indicated that, once you have a solution in place that captures all of your spend data (i.e. e-Procurement baseline), you should do a spend and opportunity analysis to understand where the real cost control opportunities are. (Notice we are saying cost control, not savings, as you don’t get savings until you have processes and technology in place to actually capture the savings you identify. Otherwise, you identify the possibility, but don’t actually capture them. But don’t get us wrong, your costs will go down, sometimes significantly, but properly selected and implemented source-to-pay technology should deliver two rounds of cost reductions — an initial round when you start capturing all of the opportunities you previously identified, and then a second round when you are able to start using it to identify new cost reduction opportunities.)

The key here is to understand, for a given solution, how much cost reduction you can reasonably hope to capture in years one, two, and three (given that you will likely have to sign at least a 3 year subscription agreement to get a decent subscription rate), and what the total cost of ownership is going to be over those three years. (It will be more than just subscription cost, there will be implementation and integration costs, training costs, and internal costs when your IT team is working with theirs to make it work.) If the total cost reduction that can be reasonably (read: conservatively) expected for the first three years is not at least five times the total cost of ownership (with at least a 20% buffer), chances are that either the value proposition is NOT there (or you don’t really understand what it is yet and should either research further, find a different vendor, or, most likely, move on to another module).

Not knowing your true numbers — for spend, suppliers, contracts, orders, invoices, etc.

This is kind of intertwined with our first mistake, but needs to be called out on its own. When doing the potential ROI analysis, you can’t make rough assumptions on how much spend by supplier/category (you’ll always be off, and sometimes considerably), how many suppliers (which will be way, way more than you think), how many contracts (which will always be too low, and you probably won’t be able to quickly find a significant number of those contracts if you don’t have a SaaS contract management solution), how many orders (and you’ll be low here as well), or how many invoices (which will be way more than orders as some suppliers will partial ship and partial invoice, may invoices will come in without POs, etc.). Get your numbers, then do your analysis.

Overvaluing the tech (and AI)

This is the biggest mistake you can make, and goes hand-in-hand with not doing the homework required to work out the real value proposition from the tech. Whenever you hear “we saved X Million with Big S2P Suite Installation” you should immediately ask all of the following questions in order:

  • how much of that was truly do to tech vs. actually instituting a process that the tech enforced (i.e. the implementation of a new supplier management platform also instituted a process that ensured all suppliers were properly qualified before being onboarded, which minimized future event time and, more importantly, prevented orders to unreliable, poor quality, and even fake suppliers and considerably reduced organizational loss due to bad suppliers — most of those savings were due to the process, not the platform; the platform would be correlated with the development processes it was then used to manage after the suppliers were onboarded)
  • of what was actually tech, how much of that was due to baseline capabilities, and how much due to advanced capabilities (that are semi-unique to that supplier’s tech and not widely/otherwise available); for example, if the tech in question was e-Sourcing, and the vendor was one of the few that offered decision optimization, how much of that was achieved just with the baseline RFX/Auction capability (i.e. best bids and standard award methodologies, lowest bid by supplier, lowest total bid by category, etc.) and how much additional savings was from decision optimization once ALL constraints were taken into account.
  • how much more the organization paid for that advanced capability and how often it was actually used / required to get savings [if it was only used 10% of the time, and only identified considerable savings half the time it was used, is it really worth it? or should the organization just do a one-off services project when those categories come up]
  • how much the savings actually relied on ML/AI, vs. just providing a fancy NL interface (when the same result could be accomplished through submenus or a few filter definitions / selections);
  • and if any savings can actually be tied to ML/AI (vs. good process and more predictable technology), what the risks of failure are here!! [i.e. if the savings were due to reduced stock-outs as a result of the “AI” doing auto-replenishment orders as needed to adjust to demand fluctuations, what happens if there is a temporary, extreme, demand spike due to a near end-of-life sale, will the algorithm assume that is a sign of demand resurgence and fall prey to the bullwhip effect, sticking the organization with tens of thousands of units it will never sell without a fire sale?

Basically, at the end of the day, more often than not, when a customer says “we saved X Million with Supplier’s Spectacular Solution“, you would gain at least 80%, if not 90%, of those savings by implementing any any other solution with the same baseline capabilities that enforced the same processes be followed. (And this is the best argument ever NOT to overpay. Paying 5X to 10X for an incremental 10% is usually NOT worth it unless your organization is a F500/G3000 with over 1 Billion in annual spend. Again, it’s all about that ROI calculation.)

Misunderstanding the SaaS provider’s viewpoint

Not the salesperson’s viewpoint (which is to sell, sell, sell and match you with the solution they think is the best fit so you will be enticed to buy), but the SaaS provider’s viewpoint. Regardless of what terminology the SaaS solution provider is using:

  • what are they actually selling now
  • what are they currently working on that you can expect to be completed before an annual roadmap revisit
  • where are they going with the tech (i.e. they are AP/Payments — are they doubling down and adding support for global payments and clearance in more countries, or are they just sticking to the basics [and only good for post-audit countries] and working on expanding into broader P2P or the new intake-to-pay/procure/process trend)
  • what is their support and training philosophy — all in-house, hybrid in-house and third-party (and you can/can’t choose), or all third party
  • what is their target market — preferred customer size, preferred industries, etc.
  • what is their philosophy on working with customers — do they take input? hold working groups? or do they just develop the features they believe are most likely to fill gaps or increase efficiency with little to no input to keep development rapid and costs down?

At the end of the day, if you don’t understand this for each provider you are considering, you won’t know if they will be the provider for you.

Failing to find the right relationship

This happens more often than not, partly due to not understanding the most appropriate tech requirements for your organization at the present time, and partly due to not really understanding both the culture of the provider and it’s viewpoint. True value materializes when you find the right tech from the right provider that will not only work with you to ensure you get that ROI, but has a vision that is congruent with where you want your organization to go.

Are these all the mistakes you can make or all the mistakes we’ve seen? Of course not, but these are some of the biggest, and if you avoid these, your chances of success shoot up considerably.

Buying for a Living

Somedays won’t end ever
But no days pass on by,
I’ll be buying here forever,
At least until I die,
Dammed if I source,
Dammed if I don’t
I’m supposed to get a break next week,
you know damn well I won’t.

Buyin’ for a livin’ (Buyin’)
Buyin’ for a livin’ (Buyin’)
Buyin’ for a livin’, livin’ and a-buyin’
I’m taking what they’re giving, ’cause I’m buying for a living

Hey I’m not complaining ’cause someone needs to spend
But beating up the vendor got me feeling fully spent
Hundred dollar cell phone, two hundred shipped
A new budget on Friday, but it’s already stripped

Buyin’ for a livin’ (Buyin’)
Buyin’ for a livin’ (Buyin’)
Buyin’ for a livin’, livin’ and a-buyin’
I’m taking what they’re giving ’cause I’m buying for a living

Whoa, buyin’ for a livin’ whoa, taking what they’re givin’
Whoa, buyin’ for a livin’ whoa, ooh

Sales rep, marketer, customer service
CEO, PR rep, account manager
Working the trade shows, they’re really all the same
Selling goods, creating need, just another day

Buyin’ for a livin’ (Buyin’)
Buyin’ for a livin’ (Buyin’)
Buyin’ for a livin’, livin’ and a-buyin’
I’m taking what they’re giving ’cause I’m buying for a living.

Buyin’ for a livin’, livin’ and Buyin’
I’m taking what they’re giving ’cause I’m Buying for a living.

Dear Analyst Firms: Please stop mangling maps, inventing award categories, and evaluating what you don’t understand!


If there’s a place you got to go
I’m the one you need to know
I’m the map
I’m the map, I’m the map
If there’s a place you got to get
I can get you there, I bet
I’m the map
I’m the map, I’m the map

… but if there’s a tool you want to score
I’m the one you must ignore
I’m the map
I’m the map, I’m the map
if there’s a tool you got to get
I’ll lead you astray, I bet
I’m the map
I’m the map, I’m the map

It’s map time! (It’s always map time!) The 2*2 onslaught isn’t over yet (and may never be)! Prepare to be continually overwhelmed with cool graphics, big company names and logos, and no information you can actually use (as is). Why? Because when you map 6+ criteria or dimensions of information down to a single dimension, and 12+ dimensions of information down to a 2×2 grid, it’s meaningless. All you know is which vendor had a total score on two sets of 6+ criteria that was in the top percentile. But you don’t know if that’s because they are good across the board on those 6 criteria, or top score on 3 of those dimensions (in the analyst’s opinion) and average score on the other 3; or top score on 3 of those criteria, average score on 2 criteria, and below average score on the last criteria — which happens to be the core technology criteria that also happens to be the most important criteria to you!

It might not be so bad if all the criteria were different aspects of a criteria category — such as core architecture, product features, and integration under technology; or product innovation, service delivery, and operational efficiency under innovation — but you have a mish-mash of scores on the seven different dimensions of product capability, market viability, sales execution / funnel success rate, marketing execution / visibility, market responsiveness, corporate operations, and overall customer experience which are squished into a single execution dimension in one of the big name maps and a mish-mash of product specific capabilities, related application offering, integrations, globalization, technology, and customer references into an offering dimension in another big name map. It’s crazy! And useless.

And it’s also mind-boggling when you consider the significant effort some of these firms put into their research, the detailed reports they produce, and the great work that often results otherwise. (You may not agree with the analysts’ opinion of what a good strategy is, what true innovation is, what the appropriate product features are, or the scoring scales; but as long as all of the vendors are scored consistently, it’s still valuable insight that you could use in differentiating vendors to find the ones that might be the most right for your organization and your challenges IF all these scores weren’t mangled into one meaningless score you can’t use.)

So, dear analyst firms, please stop! You don’t need to to this. You can provide much more value by not creating these 2*2 mangled maps and either:

  • use a graphing technique that was made for comparing multiple dimensions visually, like a spider graph
  • score less dimensions and then do multiple 2*2s on the different dimension pairs
    (after all, when customers want to buy a solution, do those customers really care about how good a vendor’s marketing is or how successful the salesperson is? heck no! they care only about how good the product is, how well the vendor can serve them, how stable the vendor is, and maybe about how innovative the vendor is if they are forward thinking and want longevity)
  • create bar, or similar, charts on the different dimensions and then give customers a tool to build their own weightings meaningful to them

It’s bad enough these map-creation analyst firms are eliminating vendors from their maps based on criteria that range from somewhat to completely arbitrary, which can include, but not be limited to:

  • an arbitrary minimum on overall revenue in the prior year on software alone
  • an arbitrary client minimum
  • an arbitrary minimum on the average number of users per client
  • an arbitrary minimum on customer size for a % of the customer base
  • an arbitrary minimum on license fees (for the majority of the customer base)
  • an arbitrary list of core “features” that are absolute
  • an arbitrary exclusion of any solution deemed to narrow/industry focussed
  • some other arbitrary requirement merely to maximize the number of vendors that can be included … which might actually eliminate the vendor with the best or most innovative product or service! (Which entirely misses the point, doesn’t it?)

Given all of this, these firms could at least produce maps meaningful to the average buyers where those buyers could extract useful information from the maps as is!

“Two by two they’re still coming down
… the satellite circus never leaves town …”

Holy smoke holy smoke,
plenty bad mappers for the doctor to stoke
Feed ’em in feet first, this is no joke
This is thirsty work, making holy smoke, yeah
Holy smoke
Smells good

The only thing that is as annoying as these meaningless 2*2s is other analyst firms inventing award categories just to create attention for themselves when those award categories are totally meaningless and useless to end customers who have no clue what they mean or what the award categories are evaluating (especially when these award categories often mix vendors with completely different solutions) such as “insight“, “innovation“, “customer-centric” and/or “growth“. While we can be sure that every vendor wants to be seen as “insightful“, “innovative“, “customer-focussed“, and “growing“, that doesn’t tell the customer if the vendor offers a product or service, or if that product is e-Sourcing, e-Procurement, Risk Monitoring, or a simple carbon calculator. And if that’s the only category the vendor is listed in, well, that’s just useless.

I want to run, I want to hide
I wanna tear down the walls that keep them outside
I wanna reach out and set the flame
Where the sheets have no name, ha, ha, ha

I wanna see insight on the page
And see confusion disappear without a trace
I wanna take shelter, I can’t ascertain
Where the sheets have no name, ha, ha, ha

As a postscript, the doctor isn’t annoyed by all of the 2*2 maps (just the majority). Although they aren’t perfect, he finds that the Spend Matters Solution Maps that, in full disclosure, he did co-create (and which he no longer has any association with) are still useful as they are still focussed entirely on two dimensions: product (& underlying technology) evaluation and customer score. (As of V3, released Fall 2021, not due for update until [at least] Fall 2023.) The product evaluation is against an extremely well defined set of criteria where each criteria has a scoring scale that at least defines fledgeling through industry standard capability (and usually above standard as well) and the customer evaluation is done entirely by the customer completing surveys with no analyst interaction whatsoever (as any survey done by an analyst introduces bias based on the way the analyst asks the question and the tone the analyst uses).

The Solution Maps are two, and only two, dimensions that can be consistently scored by any analyst who scores on the product side and consistently scored against perceived value on the customer side. Are they perfect? Of course not! The product side contains some services questions (which are soft and more open to interpretation) (but were less than 5% of the questions); the customer side can be very subjective based upon cultural norms for that customer, customer stage in the relationship (new vs. longer term), and service level the customer subscribed to (and, thus, if there are only a few customer scores, one really bad or really good, out of range, score can really affect the average); and the weightings for the maps are still analyst interpretation of what criteria are most important for each market size, but it’s one relatively pure dimension mapped against another relatively pure dimension, consistently scored, and consistently weighted.  And that’s still considerably more useful than any other map currently is.

Plus, at least when the doctor was involved, there was only ONE requirement for participation: have a standalone solution you are willing to openly demo (without an NDA) and sign a form committing to participation regardless of where you end up falling on the map (which is all mathematically, and not subjectively, computed). So while you can’t say the top vendor is for you, you can say any vendor who makes the map likely has the core tech you need (as they need to at least be industry average) and likely enough customer service to get you going on it. You can produce a short list of comparable vendors that produce a solution of the type you are looking for, of various sizes (not just the biggest vendors), and know that the solutions are reasonably comparable. This allows you to focus on the other value drivers relevant to your organization in the RFP. And if the other maps gave you just granular insight into service, innovation, and any other dimension relevant to you, think how useful they could be?