Monthly Archives: February 2025

Yes I’m Okay, But I Am Very Angry. You Should Be Too! (Part 2)

… it’s about getting it right (and not being right) … and all these influencers care about is what gets the clicks, whether it is right for Procurement or not, because whatever gets them likes and subscribes in their book is being right. Unlike THE REVELATOR, they’re not interested in meaningful discussion, constructive debate, educating you, or at least inspiring you to think critically and improve your knowledge and understanding of your field. Influencers only want the clicks, like, and subscribes that give them their next dopamine hit (and strengthen their belief that fortune will follow fame) and metrics that will allow them to get sponsors (whose messages they’ll never question) to keep going.

But, now more than ever, you need to make the right decision for you. Not only are you

  • under-staffed,
  • under-tooled, and
  • under-resourced

in Procurement, but expected to deliver with constant change in the

  • economic landscape,
  • political landscape,
  • technology landscape,
  • services landscape, and
  • funding landscape

which will often entirely invalidate everything you did and knew yesterday. More specifically:

  • an unexpected trade war will decimate a carefully crafted supply chain you’ve been curating for over a decade,
  • a geopolitical dispute, special military action, attack, or war will spark sanctions and totally close borders
  • companies come, merge, get acquired, and go every day; changing, replacing, and then taking their technology to the grave
  • services companies keep popping up, changing the toolsets they use, altering the toolsets (via partnerships) they offer you, as well as their roster — and just like it’s not the analyst firm, it’s the analyst, it’s not the firm, it’s the consultant (you want an experienced consultant, at least intermediate, and definitely not a junior consultant fresh out of grad school with no real world experience and nothing but a Chat-GPT subscription — which you are very likely to get at a Big X training so many “consultants” on AI)
  • funding mania comes and goes; when it comes, money flows like a waterfall; when it goes; it dries up like a desert; this hastens both new product development and productization as well as company bankruptcy (when the firm over invests, doesn’t see the growth, and drops the tech company faster than a hot potato)

You need insight. You need knowledge. You need education. Not influence bullshit. Because without the insight, knowledge, and education, you have no chance of making a decision that will:

  • identify the possibility of tariffs decimating a particular supply chain, so you know where to focus your risk mitigation efforts (it’s too late if you’re just reacting post tariff because, by then, there ain’t much you can do about it)
  • have the right systems in place to switch to secondary sources if a sanction or border closure comes into effect
  • select a technology provider with a solution that solves the majority of your day-to-day problems efficiently, effectively, and empathically (that works with your business model and mindset)
  • select a services provider with personnel with the right experience and toolset to support you
  • select a technology provider at an appropriate risk threshold; for example, a P2P provider that you depend on for daily transactions needs to be stable; an auxiliary experimental analytics/fraud identification solution is not as critical, if the provider disappears, you will be okay while you select and implement a replacement (although you may want to delay the actual payments until you get a new fraud detection solution in place, but with SaaS, that can be done in a week or two if you maintained the RFP information and just go to your 2nd or 3rd choice)

We need to remember that technology project failure rates have reached an all time high of 88% (in the two and a half decades of project failure the big analyst firms and consultancies have been tracking technology project failure since the late ’90s), inflation is back with a vengeance, consumer demand is flatlining in most first world countries with declining birth rates, non-renewable raw material supplies are getting scarcer and scarcer, and your job is only going to get harder with each passing day.

You need help, not bullshit. And the fact that all these influencers is doing is echoing the

  • soundbite driven drivel vendor marketing
  • analyst firms pushing the current hype and the unproven claims
  • vendors shoving Gen-AI into every nook and cranny and down your throat (whether it is appropriate or not)
  • consultants only spreading the FOMO and FUD

and collectively drowning out the few remaining educators left is just appalling. So, yes, I’m angry. And you should be too!

(And yes, I can curate my feeds to keep influencer content mostly out of them, and do, even going so far as to potentially remove you if you push their drivel my way, but that’s not the point! I know the difference between insight and drivel. Without education, a junior buyer / new Procurement professional doesn’t! And that’s why these influencers make me mad and need to go!)

Yes I’m Okay, But I Am Very Angry. You Should Be Too! (Part 1)

Apparently my influencer rants last week caused some concern among my fellow educators with regards to my health, or at least my mental health, so I’d like to assure you all that yes I am okay, but yes I am very (VERY) angry … and you should be too!

As I pointed out in some of my responses to the three LinkedIn posts that advertised my influencer week content, namely:

It’s bad enough we have to deal with:

  • a constant stream of sound-bite driven, education free marketing
  • analysts pushing these unproven claims (and then telling the buyers it’s their fault when the technology fails for buying into the technology their analyst firm relentlessly promoted)
  • vendors shoving (Gen-)AI into every nook and cranny, which not only fails to add value, but often decreases it (see: Mythbusting 2025 2015 Procurement Predictions and Trends! Part 12, for example)
  • consultants spreading the FOMO-FUD at constant Red-Alert levels

 

but now we have to deal with wannabe influencers with very little knowledge and experience in Procurement inundating social media/LinkedIn with obvious statements at best, useless content most of the time, and aggravated FOMO once they get hired by a vendor(‘s social media marketing company).

And that doesn’t help you. Not one bit. In fact, it hurts you. As the doctor wrote in Why the doctor is NOT an Influencer! Part I, as a Procurement professional, you’re unappreciated, overworked, denied the tools that would make your job easier, and blamed for everything that goes wrong. You laugh when you see the Monday.com commercial that shows people underwater by 10 am because you’re underwater 24/7/365 days a year (366 in leap years). You struggle to find a few minutes a day to read something that isn’t one of the three hundred new messages that hit your inbox overnight. If you’re dedicating a few minutes a day to read something, there better be a reward in it for you. It better at least spark a usable idea if it doesn’t give you one. You don’t need to spend 20 minutes reading five posts that tell you less than you already know. You need insight.

And, if you’re at the top of your game, like the doctor, you’d happily spend 8 to 12 minutes to read a deep 4 page article that actually makes you think or gives you real insight on a vendor’s platform than read 4 short LinkedIn posts that give you nothing more than recycled marketing sound bites. Because you need information. You need insight. You need education. Not bullshit laden clickbait designed to get the influencer likes. After all, as THE REVELATOR says …

Has Procurement Tech Peaked?

If you’ve been following along, you know the following:

  • the doctor is very disheartened at the lack of innovation, and even direction, among the major suite players
  • the doctor is tired of the nth solution popping up that does the same thing as solutions 1 through n-1 (which is why SI doesn’t even try to review every solution of the 666+ solutions that exist, but only those with actual improvement or innovation)
  • the doctor is fed up with the fact that almost every vendor has been blinded by the hype of Gen-AI and are focussed on shoving it into every virtual nook and cranny they can find in their product (whether or not it provides any value whatsoever)
  • the doctor is fed up with the constant claims that we will soon have Agentric AI that will solve all of our problems and eliminate the need for Procurement professionals

Which begs the question. Why is all of this happening?

  • why is there a lack of noticeable innovation, and even direction, among the major players (besides cramming Gen-AI into all of the nooks and crannies)?
  • why are there so few new, innovative solutions (and 40 carbon calculators when one will do)?
  • why are so many vendors jumping blindly on the Gen-AI bandwagon (heading straight for a cliff with no steering and no brakes)?
  • why are so many vendors claiming that the next generation of tech is Agentric AI?

Is it because Procurement Tech has peaked?

Sadly, for the time being, the answer is … YES!

Even though there is sill much that can be done, for the time being, procurement tech has peaked. There appears to be three major reasons for this:

  • an almost all-in focus on Gen-AI, a technology that has not delivered on its vast over-promises and likely never will;
  • an emerging focus on Agentric AI in the hopes of replacing people, instead of augmenting them; and
  • an over-focus on orchestrating what is there, instead of orchestrating what is missing.

Each of these reasons prevents the necessary innovation that is needed to take Procurement Tech to the next level.

  • As the doctor has repeatedly told you, Gen-AI is only useful if the problem at hand can be reduced to either large document search and summarization or natural language translation of inputs and outputs. The continued quest to force this technology to solve problems it fundamentally can’t is preventing any research and development on tech that would actually advance Procurement.
  • As the doctor has repeatedly claimed, the answer is not in Artificial Intelligence but in Augmented Intelligence
  • As it stands now, orchestration is just gluing best of breed systems together, it’s not really enhancing any ProcureTech.

And until

  • Gen-AI is relegated to just another AI tech that is only used where appropriate,
  • we stop trying to replace people and start trying to make them productive at a super human level, and
  • we stop gluing and start truly enhancing

ProcureTech is stuck where it’s at. That’s just how it is. For now. Maybe someday it will change. But not before you insist you want it to change, and do so loud enough that maybe a few vendors will hear you and listen and stop wasting all their time and all your money chasing the wrong tech for problems you don’t actually have.

Dear Influencer: One Final Piece of Advice!

In our first two instalments, we gave you the top ten things you can do to be the Preeminent Procurement Influencer. While that’s more advice than anyone else is going to give you without a large retainer, we’re not done yet. We have one final piece of advice for you.

Find your next job sooner than later!

You might think this is crass, but the doctor has your best interests at heart because, being one of the last remaining OG analysts and bloggers who has now been in this space for two and half decades, he knows the cold hard truth.

You’re getting into it for the fame, thinking the fortune will come, but it won’t.

You need to remember that THIS IS PROCUREMENT. It’s Not Public Relations. It’s not Marketing. It’s not even Sales. You’re not selling to someone who’s cool. You’re selling to someone who’s less cool in the corporate culture than the IT Squad locked in the basement, who has significantly less budget and oversight than the IT Squad because the C-Suite at least understands their e-Mail and ERP needs supersized servers (even if it doesn’t, because that was what was required two decades ago and they haven’t learned anything about IT since) and their shiny new gadgets (laptops, tablets, smartphones, and Garmin GPS devices which are great for hiking the Himalayas) cost big bucks, and someone who has almost no say into corporate decision making and goal setting. Moreover, you’re selling to a function which has the least professionals of all functions across the business, as well as the least jobs (about 500K in the US compared to about 2.5M marketing and 5.5M sales professionals in the US). They are few and far between.

As a result, that rush of getting new likes and followers isn’t going to last very long because you’re not going to get that many followers no matter how hard you work, how often you pump out that flashy content we chronicled earlier this week, or how cool you are. The first few hundred followers will come very fast, the next few thousand will come at a good pace, but then, things will slow down. The gratification and dopamine highs from seeing those numbers trend up will be fewer and further between. Right now, the most popular influencers in our space on LinkedIn have about 30K followers. Think about that. 30K followers, when most big name influencers have 100K+ or 1M+. That’s not very many, and that’s because of the very small market you’re targeting. If there are only 500K in the US, that means the number of professionals you’re targeting across North America, the UK, and EU (where LinkedIn is popular) is only a little over 1M — and they aren’t all on LinkedIn.

Thus, at the end of the day, there’s no fame.

And there’s no fortune either.

I don’t know if you bothered to do your research, but like most actors and actresses (who have to waitstaff or do odd jobs just to survive on their cans of tuna), most influencers don’t make money! YouTubers who get 1Million views a month can’t even pay their rent on that. UNLESS YOU HAVE A MILLION FOLLOWERS AS AN INFLUENCER, YOU CAN NOT MAKE A LIVING OFF OF IT!

But I can get sponsors? Good for you. You might pay your (office) rent on that, but you won’t pay your bills on that either. Ask the OG bloggers.

The daily grind is all there is. The ongoing, never ending, slog that will be there day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year with no fame, no fortune, and no reward.

And if you’d stop to ask why there are so few bloggers, sorry, content creators, left in our space, even fewer that have been doing it for more than a couple of years, and next to none that have been doing it for more than a decade, and did your research, you’d know that it’s because many started thinking it would be cool and fun, get them recognition and renown, and it would eventually pay off big.

But after a couple of weeks, months, or years, the vast majority of these bloggers, sorry again, content creators, realized that it’s not cool and fun (it’s just hard work), the breadth of recognition and renown was much (much) less than they dreamed, and the money, well, it just wasn’t there. They still had to make their living as a procurement leader, consultant, or startup founder — which, as we know, already required constant overtime before the content creation.

Dear Influencer, This Is Your Life! And let me save you some heartache by telling you now that You Don’t Want It. So figure out what you want to do and go do it. You’ll be much happier if you do. (Because no one is going to write your content creator obituary when you suddenly stop one day because you’re just too tired to keep going. the doctor stopped keeping track after the first hundred (100) or so dropped off. Yes, you read that right, hundred or so. Shortly after THE PROPHET and the doctor started almost two decades ago, we went from maybe a dozen bloggers to over one hundred, and then back down to less than two dozen three years later. They didn’t last, and you won’t either.)

Most of the time, it’s only the strong survive, but in our space, it’s only the non-sociopathic masochists with a pressing need to try and educate (or at least intellectually stimulate) others that survive. (And the doctor hopes THE REVELATOR agrees!) In other words, if you’re mentally well balanced, your chances of success are about equivalent to a pig flying through hell fast enough to keep the snowball from melting …)