As per Part I, this should have been a short post, because the answer is short and sweet:

All Influencer Content is Mostly Useless.

But if you understood this, you wouldn’t be following them (and these influencers would disappear as fast as they came, but, instead, we’ll have to endure them for a few years — more on this in another article).

So now we’re going to break it down continuing with the top 10 list we just published!

KPI Kollections just Konfuse the Krux of the Kase

The more metrics on that dashboard, the more directions you get pulled in. It’s not how many KPIS, it’s how relevant they are to measuring your progress in the right direction. For every active initiative you should only have two or three. For your department, you don’t want more than a dozen key KPIs that align to your primary objectives, and, preferably, less than ten if you can get away with it. (Every executive and function head will want their own metric, but not all are relevant.)

Shaping Supplier Superstars Requires Synergistic Sessions not Spec Sheets

A 12 Steps to Supplier Success check-list is nothing more than that, a checklist, which for most practitioners is totally useless because, either

1. they are too junior to know what to do,
2. they are too senior to get any use out of it, because they know what to do but don’t have the time managing a dozen other projects, or
3. they are intermediate and more than anything need a workflow tool that guides them and prompts them and guides their supplier management interactions and makes it easy for the supplier to make their contributions.

Either way, it’s not helpful. They need development plans, management software, KPIs, insights, and, sometimes, help to get it done. A checklist just reminds them of yet another thing they aren’t doing.

Minimal Maturity Models are Meaningless Without Modification Maps

In other words, all of these maps on their own are mostly useless (including, and not limited to, the maturity model the doctor did over a decade ago, which you can access here), because, again, your readers don’t need a five-by-five grid of process or technology maturity level, they need

• a maturity assessment that helps them understand where they are
• process or platforms that can help them get to the next level
• transition plans to get them from where they are to the next level on a particular path
• an understanding of the value they will realize by expending the effort to move up
• a vision to hold onto because it’s an 8-year plus journey to Best in Class for most large organizations

In other words, a five by five does absolutely nothing for the average practitioner.

Lackadaisical LogoPalooza is Lamentable

They don’t need 50 to 100 random logos they know nothing about, and likely can’t even translate into a URL — they need 5 to 10 suppliers who offer expert vetted software solutions that should be able to solve 70% to 80% of their current automation needs that they can confidently invite to a first round RFI to find the 3 to 5 they will begin a serious process with.

Agentric AI is Artificial Idiocy

Yes, RPA is great. Yes, there are valid uses for Gen-AI. Yes, you can build a natural language interface to an RPA agent and use that interface to define rules where it an auto-perform certain tasks as data comes in and states change. And yes, you can call that an agent. And if that was what Agentric AI was, that would be great and you’d be doing a service.

However, Agentric AI is being used to refer to the next generation of Gen-AI models that are supposed to have “reasoning” capabilities, that are supposed to be able to learn on their own (how?!?), and that are supposed to be able to replace the procurement professionals you want as your followers. (You read that right, these systems are being designed with the goal of replacing people, not augmenting them.) But we all know the current state of Gen-AI that can’t spell, tells you to eat rocks, and when you get unhappy with it, makes up a response it thinks you will like, backed up by references to fake articles by fake authors with fake bios, all of which it created on the spot just to please you (because that is what it was trained to do, and since hallucination is a core function of this technology … )

So, yeah, the doctor is NOT an influencer because he:

• only does top 10 lists when knitting fog is the only way to make a point
  (he is a contrarian satirist after all)
• despises inspirational posts
• believes motivational posters are useless
  (and, thus, will only tolerate LOL Cats)
• believes hobbies are for hobby blogs (or special one-time posts in special series, NOT ongoing play-by-play coverage)
• believes no good comes from exclusives or private clubs and that’s why Sourcing Innovation has always been, and will always be, equal free access for all
• avoids KPI overload (it’s not good analysis)
• would rather focus on tools and processes that enable suppliers than useless checklists
• only created and published a maturity model as part of an explanatory white paper [that followed a 3-part series] and only for a company that was putting together programs to help its customers advance to the next level (and until another such company comes along, won’t do one again)
• despises logo maps to the point that the only thing he despise more is
• the Gen-AI/Agentric AI hype train (and has to argue against it daily)

So, if you’re looking for an influencer, don’t follow him. He doesn’t care about influencing, just educating and inducing you to think. If that’s you, and we haven’t said it already, Welcome to Your SI!