Category Archives: Market Intelligence

In the Age of AI, the Analyst is King!

Never forget this!

(Click here to learn why DPGLabs.ai is best tool a VENDOR has to judge their perceived place in the ProcureTech market if that’s what you’re looking for.)

This rant is inspired by Dr. Elouise Epstein who, in this LinkedIn post, said the most wrong and dangerous thing she ever said. (And this SI article is an archive of my immediate rebuttal, found in this LinkedIn post.)

Saying that in “in the Age of AI, analysts are superfluous” is akin to saying that, “in the Age of the Internet, the Journalist is unnecessary” … and we all know how false that was, and still is. (Because the claim that the internet allowed everyone to be a journalist was not only far from the truth, but also ignored the fact that many people misuse the internet to spread rumours, conspiracy theories, and false facts that, when combined with FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt), caused others to spread and amplify those same false facts. And if Gen-AI has proven one thing, it’s that it can spread and amplify falsehoods at the speed of light.)

(Now, this is assuming Dr. Epstein believes that an analyst does more than sticking random logos on a worthless map. But if that’s her definition of analyst, then maybe she’s right.)

There are multiple problems with her statement, and more problems than can fit in the 3K post character limit of LinkedIn, so we focussed on the biggies, as that should be more than enough to point out how Gen-AI has made the Analyst more critical, not less.

1) We are not in an age of true AI. We are in an age of hallucinatory Gen-AI.

This means that, even if all the data available is mostly correct, the AI can still get it wrong.

2) DPG Labs is NOT using evidence, they are using content from various URLs and weighting it (and, if the weighting is high enough, calling it evidence).

This means that if a vendor floods third party sites with unmarked advertorials filled with fake or misleading content, the vendor profile that Gen-AI creates is sure to be wrong.

3) Most vendors and customers blast success stories and hide failures.
(No one wants to admit they blew millions of dollars.)

These only come out in private conversations and the only “evidence” comes a few years when the customer switches to a different platform much sooner than the norm.

etc.

This means that no auto-generated profile can be considered reliable without human review. (And the odds of correctness range from 95%+ for the major vendors where there is lots of correct content to work on to 50%- for new vendors with little content or a lot of misleading/inaccurate content.)

But even if the profile is mostly right, tech cannot do the following:

4) Judge organizational fit.

That goes beyond a score. (That’s why Xavier Olivera and I designed the SpendMatters, now Hackett, Solution Map as a TechMap. We assessed what most organizations couldn’t, gave them average unbiased customer scores against that assessment, and let the organizations focus on what they could assess — their needs, the vendor’s culture, service, relationship approach, etc. — and not what a static map can’t do.)

5) Give you a true timeline and success rate.

Vendors over promise and under deliver, as they all assume perfect scenarios that never materialize. Dumb Gen-AI can just assess statements, not fact, and can’t understand what factors are involved in the 3 month best-case implementation, the typical 6 month implementation, and worst-case 12 month implementation for organizations of similar size, complexity, and geography in the vendor portfolio (where even the best case 3 month is still twice as long as what they promise).

6) Help you decide if you can trust the vendor.

This is probably the most important point. Do they have what they claim, can they deliver it, and are they committed to delivering it to you on time, schedule, and budget. And it’s not just their word, or a third party survey on a select customer sub-set, it’s based on realistic assessments of performance and the individuals assigned to your project.

etc.

That being said, DPGLabs.ai is the best tool a VENDOR has to judge their perceived place in the market.

It’s also the best foundation out there on which to build a true next-generation analyst offering. If this existed a decade ago, the efficiency gains it would have enabled would have allowed us to cover 80%+ of the vendors in depth at Spend Matters (vs 20%-) on Solution Map as it would have slashed our research and writing time* and allowed us to focus on verification, gaps, and uniqueness.

I described why the offering is the best tool VENDORS have, as well as how it could be the best tool to build a new analyst offering in the comments (of the original post) in detail in this LinkedIn post, where I have included the content below for easy access.

But even though the offering has a lot of value, it’s still nowhere close to a replacement for a true analyst.

The true value of DPG Labs.

After 20 years as an analyst, I’ve learned a lot.

This includes the fact that a lot of vendors don’t know how to position themselves, and know even less about how they are positioned in the market.

To this day, I still see new vendors regularly misusing purchasing, procurement, and sourcing when describing their offerings and wondering why they aren’t showing up in the right lists, maps, or articles.

I see vendors over-focused on the hype-du-jour (AI, Agentic, Intake to / Orchestration, Analytics, etc.) who completely ignore descriptions of rock solid capabilities or unique offerings that would differentiate them from the 40 to 100 other offerings that sound almost the same. (See the SI Mega Map if you don’t believe how many competitors you really have! The 7EB V1 edition has 888 vendor logos.)

I see vendors who have no idea how the market, and more importantly, how the search engines / AI tools used by the market see and position them.

What David Bush and his team have built at DPG labs is the perfect answer to that. By correlating and cross-referencing to a common vocabulary all of the external data and coverage on you against a standard functional map definition (that captures the questions buyers are likely to ask), you can see which categories / verticals / etc. the market is putting you in and which vendors you are being put up against. If those aren’t the vendors you expect to / want to be put up against, this means one or more of the following is true:

  • you’re not describing your offering appropriately
  • the coverage you’re getting is not focussing on the key / unique / valuable aspects of your offering (and you have to change your analyst relations / marketing / partnership approach)
  • you’re (trying to) compete in the wrong market

and you have rock solid proof you can take to the C-Suite that you need to market / sell / partner different if you want to succeed.

Up until now, analysts could only tell you this … and you/the C-Suite could ignore us (by claiming it was our opinion — which it was, but our expertise meant we were right the vast majority of the time). But this tool is essentially doing what pros using AI (enhanced) tools are doing to research you, and showing you where you stand.

It’s the one offering that I would have loved to create when I was at Spend Matters, but never could (because, even 3 years ago, the AI models just weren’t there to support it). And it’s the one tool you need the most. (Plus, market clarity will ensure you score better on the right maps since the analysts will have a better understanding of you before the first interaction, which will help them ask the right questions, focus the demos, and give you the right coverage.)

And even though you can use it to create a shortlist as a potential customer, you can’t use it for final selection. I explained why in this comment, where I also reiterated how great it would be as the foundation for a next-gen analyst firm. The core rationale is the following.

We have to remember:

  1. publication is NOT evidence, it could be opinion
  2. probabilistic assessment of language is not human assessment of language
  3. news coverage is often still marketing, especially when it’s an advertorial or there is paid coverage
  4. disgruntled customers can spread lies as well as truth
  5. even “verified” sources can be hacked or altered or replaced on the internet
  6. … and when (correct) coverage is insufficient, errors (and hallucinations) multiply in Gen-AI (frontier models)

Your (Gen-) AI tools don’t know any of this! Unless every profile you build is reviewed by an expert human AFTER an expert human review of the solution (i.e. a real analyst with real knowledge and experience), which DPGLabs is not doing (as they don’t have a real analyst team), you can’t be sure it’s accurate and not free of hallucinations.

P.S. This means the only profiles I’d trust on DPGLabs are the human reviewed profiles that Dr. Elouise Epstein reviewed, which would be the profiles of the vendors she knows well, and that’s a small minority!

* Not that Gen-AI produces good content, but, as per above, when enough material exists, it can create great summaries that allow an analyst to get a reasonable expectation of a vendor offering before the demo, produce summaries for the vendor to self-correct, and produce the auto-gen fact sheets, allow the analyst to focus their efforts and writings on the true analysis, opinions, and insights that you really need.

Have We Lost The Economy of Information?

Twenty years ago, we were forming GPOs and Purchasing Consortiums to take advantage of Economies of Information. Ten years ago, we were not only rolling out suites that focussed heavily on consolidating spend (and performance) data globally (with the likes of Coupa and Sievo boasting about how much spend they had managed and normalized) to take advantage of the economy of information global spend data gave us, but building best in class analytics solutions to take advantage of all of the data they (could) gather(ed).

In the age of (predictive) analytics, which preceded the current age of AI Hype, the importance of data finally started to become recognized and you had a number of startups hit the scene providing next-gen data feeds. (Near) Real-time commodity indices, market price data, risk data, company financial data, carbon data, energy rates, water rates, regional overheads, average process time, average GPO and transaction rates, average performance data, etc. Any organization that wanted to build a best-in-class should cost model, best in class performance model, etc. The information was available, there was an economy for information, and the economy of information was right around the corner.

Let’s step back and define what we meant by this. On economies of information, twenty years ago we wrote:

The consortium of the future offers the benefit of expertise more so than it offers the benefit of scale. Eventually, especially with constantly rising raw material prices, the best practices employed by a competent consortium will squeeze all of the fat out of the supplier’s margins and the best price will be obtained. Once this occurs, the consortium will use its expertise to assist its members in advancing purchasing technology, reducing wasteful consumption, and improving the application of the goods and services they purchase. Since a consortium has access to all of the knowledge of its members, it can tap this knowledge to identify the best potential suppliers with the best potential products and services to meet member needs. Furthermore, this gives it a much better chance of identifying and qualifying low risk suppliers.

In other words, with a fact-based outlook on reality, consortiums could help take Procurement to the next level. Then, when the data-stream startups made all of that same information easily available as plug and play data feeds into your suite through standard APIs, the true economy of information hit Procurement for those who wanted it and Procurement could make insight-based and fact-based decisions and get better.

But now that we’re a few years into the age of AI Hype, I believe we’ve lost the economy of information. There a few reasons for this:

  • we’ve replaced data feeds with LLM chatbots like clod and chat, j’ai pété and assume they have access to the same data, and, most importantly, the same ability to run predictive analytics on that data
  • despite claims to the contrary, the LLMs are getting worse by the day … now that the majority of data on the internet is AI generated slop, being cross fed into other LLMs, regurgitated with compounding errors, we are not only losing the core data in the tsunami of slop but the meaning of that data as well
  • with LLMs being cheaper than data feeds, the data feeds have been ignored, a number have went out of business, and the rest are floundering

There’s no information without actual, verified, facts and intelligent interpretation, and the majority of that has been lost in the age of AI hype.

If too many real data providers, as well as applications that deterministically and intelligently integrate and analyze real data and real facts, go out of business, there will be no solid foundations for real information, and, thus, no solid foundations for economies of information — and then we’ll be back to the Procurement dark ages.

Technology has never advanced Procurement. Only facts, data, process and decision improvement based on intelligent interpretation has.

It’s Time To Put An End to Business Spend Management!

Coupa may have built their Billion dollar business on it, but the time for Business Spend Management (BSM) is at an end!

Spend Management may have been the business strategy and philosophy that leaders practice and followers fail to understand according to THE PROPHET (who penned it two decades ago), but that was then, and this is now.

While spend management wasn’t supposed to be just cost management, but instead an incremental change that represents a new type of thinking, a way of taking integrated approaches to not just procurement, but all aspects of non-revenue generating operations and a way of thinking about your global supply chain strategy that would reduce costs, improve processes, and increase profits, that’s not what it became.

Spend Management became a fancy term for cost reduction (and, for the most part, that didn’t include cost avoidance), and even when optimization was used, the objective was always price. The majority of analytics focussed on spend, and even when process analytics were run, they were always framed in terms of cost and savings if automation was increased and/or process time decreased. Even multi-objective RFPs were primarily weighted on price, if they were weighted on anything else at all once basic supplier, product, and/or service requirements were met.

And now, in the age of AI (hype), all of the agentic / BS AI Employee offerings are focussed on offering you solutions to your Procurement problems that will reduce overall cost (base cost, human cost, processing cost, etc.). Cost, cost, cost.

But, for as long as it has existed, that’s never what Procurement was about. The goal might be to keep costs down, but the point of Procurement is the acquisition of a good or service. Supply, NOT Spend. Now, it’s true that the spend has to be less than what an individual would pay on his or her own to acquire the product or service or, as per Coase, there’s no reason for the business to exist, but if the business can’t acquire any products or service to allow them to offer a product or service for sale, the spend doesn’t matter.

That’s why BSM (where the “B” doesn’t necessarily mean “Business”) needs to end. It’s time to return to supply management, with guarantee of supply (not minimization of spend) at the forefront. This means a focus on risk minimization, production management, logistics management, trade management, and other variables that contribute to assurance of supply (and prevention of disruption). Costs can only be optimized once all of these other factors are taken care of.

This is the only way to procure in today’s volatile times, and, moreover, the only way to control cost. Real spend management is not just minimizing unit costs, transportation costs, and other purchase prices, but reducing operational costs across the board. You’re not reducing costs if the organization has to buy 30% off of contract because of delays, disruptions, and defects. And you’re definitely not reducing costs if you have to constantly expedite shipments, buy from alternate sources of supply at higher prices, or lose considerable revenue due to stock outs while paying for warehouse space / retail space.

It’s optimizing human intelligence against dumb automation to make sure processes are optimized, exceptions are quickly processed, risks mitigated to the extent possible, and disruptions detected and addressed as soon as they arise.

It’s Supply Management. (Not Spend Management.)

The New and improved Triple Lucky Sourcing Innovation Cascading Mega-Map … Now With 33% More Vendors!

7EB V1 Edition (c) 2026-09-27

Still totally useless, but still slightly less useless than every other logo map that clogs your feed!

1. Every vendor url still valid and active as of 3 days ago! (w.r.t. posting date)

2. Every vendor logo is clickable and takes you to a live site (as of 3 days ago w.r.t. posting date)!

3. Every vendor is mapped to a meaningful category as of the last date of analyst investigation!*

So what’s the point? Click here for the full explanation that has been moved to the end of the post (as it’s the same as last time).

In summary, let this be proof that there are a lot of logos in our ProcureTech+ space and that, if you want logos, you got logos!

888 of them!

Enjoy!

Source-to-Pay
Souce-to-Contract Procure-to-Pay Intake-to-Orchestrate
Sourcing + SXM + CLM Sourcing + Analytics SXM + Analytics e-Procurement Invoice-to-Pay / AP Expenses Payments (& P-Cards) Training
Sourcing + SXM Sourcing + CLM SXM + CLM Sourcing SXM CLM Analytics
Direct Supply Chain Cyber Monitoring ESG / Carbon Marketplaces Legal Marketing SaaS Intelligence
(3rd Party) Risk Mangement Contingent Workforce Management Hospitality (e-)Document Exchange AI Procurement Offerings AI Frameworks (Generic)

Source to Pay
 apsentra corcentric coupa ebidtopay
effigo Fluenta gep ivalua jaggaer
onemarket onventis raindrop Safal sap
simfoni synertrade zycus

Source to Contract
 curtisfitch deepstream ensolva lgx
mercanis mercell merlin Oxalys procol
scanmarket Sourcing Acumen Teradix vendorpanel

Sourcing + SXM + CLM beneering buyingstation c1 cotiss
delta esm felix fullstep gainfront
intenda ionwave ispnext krinati lightsource
marketdojo marketplanet medius oalia oneadvanced
penny proactis proculy prokuria readytech
sourcingforce supplyon tradeinterchange vortal workday
zapro

SXM + CLM anydata birdseye brooklyn certa
convergepoint gatekeeper ignite itbid knovos
weproc

Sourcing + CLM aufait axya bonfire cobblestone
maistro prm360 safesourcing SourceMagnet tradogram

Sourcing + SXM 4Links aerchain apadua archlet
Bridge Axis cimmra cirplus cofactr Elit
Hazel inpromax k2 Lets Procure livesource
newtron oboloo opentrd pinpools Planet Bids
pratis procurekey procurementexpress promena prospeum
qad qcsolver sourcedogg srmeprocurement supplios
sustainment teamprocure tradebeyond truevaluehub valdera
vendorful

Sourcing & Analytics curvo Dexter levadata requis

SXM & Analytics coglegal costbits everstream flowie
hivebuy lytica softconcis spendqube veridion

Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) aavenir agiloft airflip apporchid
arteria atamis avvoka Black Boiler bonterms
brightleaf cipherace concord conga contracthound
contractai contractbook contractlogix contracts365 contractsafe
dealsign DigitalMirror docfield docjuris docusign
dsilo ebrevia icertis inhubber intelagree
ironclad joro lawgeex leahai legalrobot
legalsifter legartis lexcheck linksquares litera
luminance malbek Miramis opengov pramata
Recital relativity simplicontract sirion spotdraft
terzo thinkingmachine thoughtriver tomorro trackado
trakti trueledger unimarket Volody whitevision

Sourcing aestiva alpega amplio bamboorose
bestauction bideg bidiful bidlock bidso
brainal cosmoone enverus esupplier expenzing
fairmarkit Glopser In-Tend keelvar lhotse
loopio mysupply nextenders onemoresource OptiProq
pagerduty partanalytics ply postrfp ProcureCloud
procurementflow protendering Purchaser responsive serex
solvoz supplychaincube supplyframe transfix wantex
zivio

Supplier Management (SXM) achilles adaptone agora alpas
apexanalytix aravo askafox auditcomply avetta
axiscope bedrock canopy cmx craft
creditriskmonitor eProcure eved exigis FlockScore
franconnect ghx globality graphite grms
haloai hellios hicx informatica integritynext
interos isnetworld itesoft jiga kodiakhub
kyriba leanlinking lexisnexis linkana lupr
matchory MavenVista mycomplianceoffice meshworks mfg
opuscapita orbweaver partnerelement paymentworks perimeter
planergy processunity procurence qmsc relatico
resilinc riskledger scoutbee silex smartkyc
sourcemap sphera stateofflux stimulus suppeco
supplhi supplierday SupplierGateway supplierio suppliersoft
supplyhive supplyrisksolutions tacto tealbook thomasnet
transcepta transparencyone trustyoursupplier TSM Supply Bridge vendorapp
vendorscoreit venminder vendorvue zumen

Analytics acquireinsights aera akirolabs alteryx
analytics8 anaplan anvilanalytical calculum creactives
cxonexus deliciousdata digitate electrifai hunterai
ivoflow kiresult metricinsights mithra neqo
onetrust oversight partnerling PI Data Analytics prgx
proaact procurevue pulse robobai rosslyn
Samification scalue sievo silvon sivuno
sourcinginsights spendata spendboss spendcraft spendedge
SpendGuru spendhq spendkey smartcube spendscape
spendworx sps suplari tamr vanta

Procure-to-Pay (P2P) b2be birchstreet b1p compleat
curemint dynatos DIG Documation elcom
equallevel esker ezatlas fraxion inbuild
kissflow marketboomer modernpo open ecx oracle
orderco pagero pairsoft payem precoro
proceedo procuredesk procurenode ProcureTiger ramp
settle SIB softco sutisoft tradecentric
tradeshift vroozi

eProcurement bellwether bill brex causeway
unanet controlhub cordis enkash factwise
finexio fluentcommerce idas inorder Integra
lojistic Manugics markit nimbi openenvoy
payhawk procurementpartners punnchoutcatalogs purchasingplatform Redro
Response sovra spendmap spendwise teampay
uppler Veriscape vurbis WPSM yaydoo

Invoice-to-Pay (I2P) / Accounts Payable (AP) abby airbase apexpress appzen
aria avidxchange basware billtrust bluechain
candex concur coreintegrator corpay dataserv
directcommerce dooap edenred edicom emburse
ezcloud fiscal freshbooks getpaid glean
Intellyse iqinvoice lexmark makershub mineraltree
nipendo nium onphase opentext paid
photoncommerce ProcureSwift"" procurify relish rillion
sage servicenow snapb2b snowfox sourceday
spendconsole spendesk stampli symbeo taulia
tipalti xelix xsuite yooz

EXPENSE airwallex deem Enaviya expensify
finetune Mesh navan travelperk pleo
pluto tangoe worktrips

PAYMENTS & V/P-CARDS bluebean BlueSnap bottomline enable
Endura finix GroovePay Paylocity payoneer
paystand previse Prime Revenue transactis transfermate
Veem wise

Intake-Manage-Orchestrate
 appian arkestro automationanywhere capto
celigo convergentis corvolo Elemica elementum
focalpoint levelpath netfira omnea ontra
opstream oro P2Cnnct pega pipefy
pivot procureai Procurement-X provalido qntrl
sudozi tonkean workfellow zflow zip

ESG/Carbon Scope 3
 carbmee carbonaltdelete carbonanalytics carboncare
carbonchain carboncloud carbonfit carbonminds circularise
circulartree circulor climatecamp Climate Choice co2ai
conserviceesg cozero ctrls daato Diginex
ditchcarbon ecovadis emitwise Everledger greenkpi
Green Project Gryn makersite measurabl minespider
Normative OneClickLCA Pulse responsibly Secaro
sustainalytics Sustamize Sweep trustrace veriforce
verso vertaeon watershed

Cyber Monitoring
 BitSight cybersecurityintelligence securityscorecard

Direct Supply Chain
 approve athingz CADDI Current SCM
ensun Entec exiger exostar facturee
frdm genlots Kodiact kreatize Luminovo
Makat. marvo nimbly omx overhaul
owlsolutions Parsio partfox partspace prewave
qstrat rapidratings Resourcly sayari shouldcosting
SkySelect SpareParts Now SpareTech Speya supplywisdom
trademo Valstream versedai visotrust whistic
wholechain xometry zetwerk

Legal
 apperio brightflag bryter filevine
fulcrum lawvu Lintum mitratech persuit
thomsonreuters wolterskluwer

Marketing
 agencymania alliansis decideware hhglobal
mtivity moosh rightspend

SaaS
 appdirect apptio Archways auvik
beamy bettercloud calero cledara cloudeagle
diminish entrio flexera flywl hudled
lightyear lumos nachonacho najar npi
productiv saasrooms sastrify setyl spendflow
SpendHound substly torii trelica trgscreen
tropic varisource vendr vertice viio
zluri zylo

Training
 eveneum lavenir positivepurchasing

MarketPlaces
 auxionize axiom bizeebuy cimple
collectivespend droppe faire growinco iap
joor kaleida mercadolibre Origami Marketplace partstrader
procureafrica produceiq rheaply smartequip sourceit
unite wescale

Intelligence
 AIM Drive AirFaas apriori aranca
beroe bipsolutions brightfield buynamics capella
chai consource Contify convergencedata costdata
cottrillresearch covalyze Dalinea DataPred Data Capital
Deducta Digiprocure Digita diprima dnb
easykost evpsolutions expana Fakto fareye
freightos freightender fuelme Glass importyeti
InfinityLoop Kemiex LRQA EIQ magayz metalminer
mtisystems Muir Negotiations nvelop Osapiens
pando paxly moodysanalytics Predactica procureforce
procurementiq Predikt PriceWatch ProcuraForge Procuredge
ProcurementResource Pro Purchaser Radar Radar RepRisk Signal AI
sourceintelligence sourceful SourceReady sovos spikefli
Supplied totalbid trax truevaluehub trustpair
Wood Mackenzie xeneta

Risk
 Archer Assent Counter Forced Labor Coverbase
Diligent enlighta Eximware Kharon LogicGate
LogicManager Navex Owlin SAI 360 Spectrum
Z2 Data

Contingent Workforce Management
 3 Story Software Beeline Conexis VMS Eqip
Flentis Fratch HireGround IWT Magnit Global
nextSource OnSource OuterScore Pactum Pixid
Renhead Simplify WorkMarket YunoJuno

Hospitality
 Access Access FutureLog Glide
Folio Glide POS Ally POS Ally

OOCument eXchange
 InstaPunchout Leverage Rinktee SupplyConnect

AI Procurement Offerings
 12new abra allcaps Aron
Autopilot binoloop Commerce Decisions CrowdFox Crown
Delvo Didero Envoy EvoLinq Flipthrough
GenieWorks Kavida Lexagle LinkSystems Lio
Magentic Mentum MONQ Nibble Nomia
Pavus PayFlows PRMAi Qado sapiences2p
Simple AI Soource Sourcera Tamarin AI Teem
Traza Vallor Whispor Zalion Zinit
Zoho

AI Frameworks (Generic)
 Altana BIMPulse BotFriends DeepVu
Endeavour freehand G360 GoComet HCL Tech
ID8 Intedat Intelizest KetteQ Krista
Logility Mandel Matus Miralel Mulesoft
Nanonets o9 Optimized Optimus Fintech Opus
Procuros Rippling TechnoMile tracelink TradeForm

To again make it utterly clear you can’t select a vendor based on a random grouping of logos on a map, even if they are categorized! (And especially if the solution has not been human reviewed and verified!)

Not even if the map categorizes the vendors by market size, industry, and/or geography. Those are just proxies for organizational spend, solution needs and cultural requirements. Not every mid-market manufacturing plant in the USA is the same.

The only way to select a good vendor is to follow a proper assisted process and engage an expert who understands what vendors are out there to identify the right vendors to invite to the RFP process once your true needs have been identified.

Especially considering the true number of vendors out there is many times more than what an average big analyst firm will tell you, especially when they restrict their recommendations to their paying clients in their maps, and multiples of what an average big consultancy will tell you, especially when that consultancy only knows their partner solutions (that they need to maintain significant focus on to maintain their preferred partner status).

So, what’s the value?

As we explain in detail in the real value of the sourcing innovation mega map, it shows you

  1. why you need proper proper assisted solution selection (and we can’t stress this enough)
  2. how dynamic the space is:
    • 2 more companies are gone in just 8 months
    • 8+ companies have been acquired or renamed
    • there are just too many options for an average buyer to make sense of
  3. quite a few vendors ARE NOT GOOD (for you at least) by statistics alone

P.S. Generally, logo size means nothing — logos were scaled to be readable. However, in this 7EB V1 preliminary version of the 2027 Mega Map, new vendor logos are 25% larger. (These new vendor logos will be scaled back in size 25%, or all the other logos scaled up 25%, in the final version, likely released in January after the annual culling when walking dead vendors typically go into liquidation or shutdown or acquired vendors get full absorbed into the acquiring company.)

* Some vendors haven’t been reviewed in a few years, so offerings may be more extensive than what was originally offered, or may have changed focus. (One analyst can only review so many vendors a year!)