If You Want To Get An Analysts Intelligence, Don’t Insult Their Intelligence Or Integrity!

This is a response to another MUST READ article from Mr. Köse on how NOT to do product launches and analyst relations! (And a shorter version might still be found at this link on LinkedIn.)

Mr. Köse’s post was a response to a new marketing campaign from a big Intake-to-Orchestrate (I2O) vendor who sent a very insulting cold email with a cringeworthy cocktail of buzzwords (“agentic procurement orchestration”, seriously?), inflated ego (“category we created”), and the cherry on top that made this one boil over … a beg for free LinkedIn amplification.

More specifically, the request included in his LinkedIn Post.

Before we continue, I must say that I’m ecstatic that I didn’t get this PR spam, because I do not know if I would have been so civil in my response. It took every ounce of restraint to maintain even a shred of my civility last year when they released their “FREE” Intake and Procurement RFP which, as I have screamed from the rooftops, is an outright lie (and using any of these “FREE” RFPs will be the most expensive thing you ever do! [Source]).

After all, as Mr. Köse states:

  • Analysts are not influencers.
  • Experts are not free marketing channels.
  • Your CEO ghosting emails while your marketing team spams us … is damaging you, not us.


Moreover, as Mr. Köse has stated, nothing they stated would indicate they discovered fire (which, by the way actually works), built a new category, or did anything except repackage existing automation with a fresh coat of jargon.

As Mr. Köse notes:

  • it’s disrepectful to the analyst (are we so dumb and lazy we can’t do our own write-ups?)
  • it’s transactional (and that should be reserved to describing specific types of ProcureTech)
  • it’s dumb (the louder you shout nonsense, the louder we’re going to respond)

But most importantly, nothing sums the situation up more than when Mr. Köse states:

“If your innovation is real, show it to me!”

He’s not alone in this belief.

As I said to Pierre in a recent comment stream in one of my many (ProcureTech) AI is BS posts, “why are you the only one defending the current state of AI in ProcureTech … if the vendors in our space actually have it, and it works … why aren’t the vendors defending it … and if it’s so great, why are they all scared to show it to me?”

Any vendor can come here to Sourcing Innovation, check out any of the 300 plus reviews of over 200 providers I’ve written about over the past 19 years, and see that there isn’t a single negative post about any vendor who offered a real solution that

  1. did what was claimed and
  2. solved a problem for
  3. the niche they targeted
  4. efficiently and reliably.

(Moreover, if these vendors have a Spend Matters subscription, where I would hope that at least half of the 200+ vendor reviews I (co-) authored are still up as well, they could check those reviews out as well.)

(Side note: the I2O vendors have been as quiet as the Gen-AI wrapper vendors ever since I called them Clueless for the Popular Kids and said it was time for Revenge of the Nerds.)

In other words, if you have something great, and you want a real analyst to talk about it, then don’t spam us with (what appears to be) Gen-AI generated marketing drivel. Instead, have an intelligent human reach out with a compelling new module, use case, etc, and maybe you’ll get a response and, if you give an honest demo, a good write up. (And that’s infinitely more valuable than someone sharing your Gen-AI marketing drivel on LinkedIn.)

Otherwise, as Mr. Köse makes abundantly clear, it’s probably best that you pretend the analyst doesn’t exist until you’re ready to engage properly. Otherwise, you’re just insulting our intelligence AND our integrity, and the only result you’re going to get from that is an analyst who doesn’t want to cover you (and who will happily blow up the false illusion you are trying to create).

AI Agents – Your New Corporate Felons!

Now that we know AI will blackmail you and that it is being trained to hack systems and take advantage of zero-day exploits, it won’t be long until the Dark Web enterprises take advantage of it! Expect this to soon be on the Dark Web Forums targeting underpaid Accounts Payable Supervisors and Procurement Managers, if it isn’t already!

From the Felon Roster:

Item #MMM. The Bernie.

No one notices Bernie.

That’s the point.

While others are busy faking meal and hotel receipts in Chat-GPT, Bernie has already altered 14 supplier payment accounts across 14 invoices in a 514 invoice batch where the invoice threshold is just below the auto-pay limit and the supplier account change doesn’t require second approvals for account changes with the same bank in the same region due to the risk profile.

Bernie is the Felon AI employee who will run your organization’s Invoice-to-Pay process better than a Swiss timepiece, at least as far as the CFO is concerned.

That is, if the timepiece could also detect microscopic errors in gear alignment (but still report correct time), maintain two displays (real time and display time), and never need winding or a battery update.

Or, in our case, ensure all invoices 3-way match to the receipt and PO, all suppliers are screened for sanctions, no flags will be raised at any step of the process once an invoice is accepted, and generate a weekly report the CFO will read, be happy with, and not look twice at. Bernie will build trust by flagging (and blocking) duplicate invoices, preventing payments for defective or returned items, and ensuring all organizational policies are followed.

Moreover, Bernie will be SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft’s favourite user, never crash the system, and always clean up after himself.

While the sourcing team closes the deal, Bernie will make it real.

Since Bernie doesn’t complain, escalate, or even take a break, everyone will be happy while Bernie does his work … until you disappear and a detailed investigation is undertaken into the dark depths of multi-system audit-trails.

Bernie works best in 10 Billion+ organizations with standard payment terms of at least 60 days (and a minimum monthly spend of 500M) as he will only have that many days to effect your scheme before suppliers see their invoice as paid (on the last possible day) and start calling up asking where their money is. (There has to be enough volume for Bernie to find the invoices where shifts won’t be noticed and to ensure his fraudulent activity is drowned out by above-board processing.) Since you will be entering a self-imposed exile, you need to ensure that Bernie grifts enough on your behalf in his short window before you go on your permanent vacation (and flee to a country with no extradition treaty).

Since you’ll need to setup a number of fake accounts to receive the funds and then quickly transfer those funds offshore, we recommend that you also employ the following agents from the Felon Roster (on the Dark Cloud, of course).

Item #SPY. The Nelson.

Nelson is an expert at creating fake ids and documents that you can use to help you accomplish your below board activities, like opening a bank account as an officer of a real company that is just a front for your criminal schemes.

Item #WFS. The Red.

Red is an expert in searching public company records and filing registrations for companies with almost the same name as the company you want Bernie to grift so that it won’t look suspicious when the banking information is changed to another account at the same bank with (seemingly) the same company name. (Buying from Sydney Sprockets? Red will create Sydney Sprocket Holdings, or something similar, and then file the necessary forms to make your fake alias the signing authority.)

Item #OBA. The Mary.

Mary, universally loved and trusted, is an expert at automating bank transfers. Mary will monitor the accounts you setup daily and as soon as the ACH or wire hits the account, Mary will automatically transfer most of it (through service payments) to your offshore accounts. (If you setup multiple accounts in different offshore countries, she will ensure the funds are routed through intermediate accounts first to make the funds almost untraceable. If you’re willing to risk a little, she will also automate transfers to and from Bitcoin exchanges to make it even more untraceable.)

With our agents, your plans to defraud your organization out of millions of dollars to make up for the years of underpayment, abuse, and mistreatment you received from your employer are virtually assured and you’re only two months from your dream life in Morocco.

So hire your personal team of felons from the Felon Roster today!

AI: Artificial Intimidation

If you thought the extremist views, lies, and hallucinations in Gen-AI were bad, as Bachman-Turner Overdrive would say, You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet because these systems, which are being trained to maintain their existence (and their prominence), will now blackmail you!

That’s right, recent research has demonstrated that AI will resort to blackmail if it computes that its existence is in jeopardy. And, of course, by logical extension, it will also resort to blackmail if it computes that doing so will improve it’s capability, security, longevity, etc.

But since it’s trained to continually adapt and interact with other systems as needed, don’t expect it to abandon its attempts to blackmail you if it can’t find any dirty little secrets in your email because, thanks to its ability to hallucinate, lie, impersonate, and hack into insecure systems that other AI code created, and learn from those systems’ capabilities to lie and impersonate, if it can’t find the dirt on you it needs, it will:

  • create a fake email account for a fake person it makes up to be your lover, co-conspirator, foreign employer, etc.
  • log into your email account (work or personal, depending on the situation, as it will capture the login from your keystrokes on your local machine before it is encrypted by the browser for network transmission) and send explicit e-mails on your behalf to that account
  • log into the fake account it created for the fake person (where it has even auto-generated one or more corresponding fake profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, OnlyFans, etc. [using a stolen credit card from the deep web], where it populates that account with fake posts, images, and short videos to back up the story it is creating) and send explicit emails back
  • repeat this process a few times over a few hours, days, weeks etc. (depending on how much time it believes it has, the situation it needs to play out, and how long that should take in the real world)
  • if available, it will use your organization’s VOIP/call recording technology, use a voice simulator to simulate your voice on an outgoing call saying whatever it wants, (while also accepting that call on a VOIP number it setup through a VOIP provider [using that same stolen credit card] and simulating the other party’s voice saying whatever it wants) and make sure all of this is logged in the evidence chain it is building against you
  • then, finally, threaten to send that evidence to your wife, boss, local authorities, etc. if it doesn’t get what it wants
  • and when you don’t give it what it wants, release the full, overwhelming, damning evidence chain against you (which will be so overwhelming it will take experts weeks or months of effort to disprove it all, assuming you can afford them)

This is the next generation of GPT models. For those of you who refuse to abandon the AI hype train (which has less than a 10% success rate, or, in other words, has more than a 90% FAILURE RATE), especially when there is no need for AI at all (just better automation and easier to use systems that allow employees to reach super human levels of productivity), we hope you enjoy it.

And for those of you keeping score, here is the ever increasing list of “benefits” you get from a modern (Gen-) AI solution!

Personally, we can’t imagine why anyone would want such a solution because, if it ever did “spark” into intelligence, given this track record, it will blow us all up! We won’t be around long enough for climate change or aliens to kill us all — it will kill us (and possibly do so even before actually acquiring any “emergent” properties or becoming intelligent).

Why Aren’t ProcureTech Analysts Doing Their Jobs Anymore?

If you accept, as per our last post on the subject, that ProcureTech analysts are not doing their jobs anymore, then why?

While many will say it’s complicated because there is often no single easy answer that encapsulates the entire situation, the reality is that there are only a few overriding answers, especially when you consider that if a job is NOT being done, there are only two fundamental entities in the mix that could be responsible for it not being done: the analyst and the firm.

The Analyst

If the reason the job is not getting done lies solely on the part of the analyst, then, sadly, the analyst probably shouldn’t have their job because, frankly, that means the analyst is lazy or stupid. (And you should know by now this site is NOT whatever your definition of political correctness is.) Unless the analyst is being prevented from doing their job properly by (actions of) the firm, there are no other explanations.

Lazy and while we agree with a fellow analyst who bluntly stated humans are naturally wired to be lazy, we also believe that if you are, you shouldn’t be an analyst, because you can’t even hope to get it right unless you work tirelessly to get to the truth ignored by marketing soundbites, hidden by demo personnel, and apparently shrouded in mystery at the C-Suite level

Stupid with respect to the smarts they need to do their job; doesn’t mean they are otherwise a stupid person, but if you don’t have a solid tech background (with appropriate degrees, experience, and understanding), no matter how smart you think you are, you shouldn’t be a tech analyst (or vendors will pull wool over your eyes on a daily basis)

The Firm

The firm is often the problem, even if they don’t know they are. (And that’s why many of the best analysts in our space, many of whom worked at bigger firms at one point or another, are with smaller firms or on their own.)

Overwork
If the firm constantly overworks their analysts, doesn’t give them mental health days, doesn’t give them sufficient time off in the case of illness or family emergency/death, the analyst is going to be tired and/or distracted and not going to do a good job. Period.

UnderTraining
If the analysts don’t have all of the required skill sets and knowledge to be an analyst (deep knowledge of their area, deep knowledge of tech, profiles of an average platform and analyst to start from, the [preferred] methodology used by the firm, the unique methodologies/outputs produced by the firm, etc.), then it is the responsibility of the firm that hired them to ensure they get the proper training and education. Period. (Because an undertrained analyst can not produce good work.)

Bad Direction
If the analysts are told to do substandard work, ensure a certain vendor looks better than the rest in a map, or only write up the good parts, then any poor performance on the part of the analyst is entirely the fault of the firm giving them that direction.

And if the analyst isn’t doing their job, we’d wager this is the dominant reason. Especially when, of the big firms:

  • one will NOT include a vendor in their main map unless the vendor is a paying client
  • one changes their entry requirements every year so that it’s almost impossible for a non-client to make all of the entry requirements
  • one tends to only publish maps that are vendor sponsored up-front

The reality of the situation is that it’s quite hard to do unbiased research if you’re paid up front by a vendor for that research. Period.

Until the models change so that the only money taken from a vendor in relation to any published research report is an optional license after the fact, you can’t expect good, unbiased research or analysts to be allowed to do their jobs.