Debbie Wilson

Happy April Fools Day, and welcome Springtime! Here in northern New England we are happily seeing bluebird- blue skies once again after a long, windy, rainy storm.  Thank heavens.  There is, as usual, lots of interesting news from this past week.  

SciQuest, a well-known, North Carolina-based vendor with a catalog e-marketplace, supplier network and SaaS-delivered procurement applications, filed a Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday indicating it interest to go public.  S-1s are fabulous documents with lots of detail on a company’s financial performance, and this one was no exception.  In it, SciQuest reported that it $2.6 million in net income on sales of $36 million for 2009.  The vendor indicated that it generated $4.5 million in positive cash flow from operations for the year.  That number would have been quite a bit higher if it were not for a $3.2 million litigation settlement payment to an undisclosed party, which I am going to guess was ePlus.  Regardless, the S-1 shows that SciQuest is doing well financially.  

Puridiom, another US-based e-procurement vendor, announced version 4.0 of its software this week in its March/April 2010 newsletter.  (couldn’t find a link to it, sorry).   New features include an improved dashboard, improved search, RFX templates, order/invoice approvals and new language capabilities. 

It seems like more people are changing jobs this spring than usual.  One of the latest changes include Andrew Bartolini, formerly of Aberdeen, who has entered the blogosphere with a brand new site,  http://cporising.com/  I had the pleasure of working alongside Andrew on several occasions, and always found him to be professional, thought-provoking and inspiring.   And Paige O’Neill of Aravo has accepted a position at Aprimo as head of corporate marketing and communications.  I wish them both well! 

Thought of the Week – An Optimistic Spring

To tell you the truth, the dominant thought running through my head right now is, “Whew, glad that quarter is over!”  What distinguished last quarter to me was the subtle but persistent increase in optimism – across our clients, within Gartner, and in the press in general.  Yes, healthcare reform, new debt issues in Europe and sticky unemployment levels tugged at our spirits – but at this moment it looks like a double-dip recession is not upon us, thank heavens.  I think we all look forward to more prosperous times, no? 

Work in Progress

I am making good progress this week on my follow-up report on supply base management.  It is a follow-up to the Magic Quadrant for Strategic Sourcing Application Suites in the sense that I am leveraging the data we collected on the suite vendors – and expanding the scope to look at the wide field of interesting best-of-breeds.  We will be profiling vendors with roots in vendor risk management, thanks to help from my colleague French Caldwell, and vendors in quality management, thanks to my colleague Simon Jacobson.   The report is currently scheduled for publication in June. 

New Research

I am delighted to have had the opportunity to work with Proactis to produce a webinar entitled, “eProcurement Demystified:  Top 10 Questions for Evaluating eProcurement.”   For access to the video, see http://www.proactis.co.uk/newsevents/news-archive/2010/march/proactis-and-leading-it-analyst-firm-discuss-top-10-questions-for-eprocurement.aspx

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