by Debbie Wilson | April 13, 2011 | Comments Off
Emptoris Empower Europe 2011 The Emptoris 2011 European customer conference held last week was a pleasant affair. The lovely setting by the Mediterranean Sea in Barcelona provided a relaxing backdrop to Emptoris’ favorite crowd – CPOs from the world’s largest companies, each accompanied by two or three top lieutenants. Altogether, I estimate that 30-40 [...]
Comments Off
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Debbie Wilson | April 6, 2011 | Comments Off
One thing I’ve been preaching to the market about over the last year is the problematic nature of trying to use a business model that works well for document exchange for direct materials and catalog-based procure-to-pay to the purchases of services. The basic issue is this: it’s reasonable to charge a transaction fee that is [...]
Comments Off
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Debbie Wilson | March 18, 2011 | 3 Comments
It’s been an especially wonderful week this week in my work life, because I’ve had the privilege of speaking to a number of reference clients for our upcoming e-procurement rating document. As a part of our due diligence in rating vendors, we survey and speak with as large a number of user clients as we [...]
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Debbie Wilson | February 17, 2011 | 1 Comment
The Downside of Being the Biggest Fish in the Pond I am noticing a marked tendency for very large clients of very small solutions vendors to eventually have a very sticky problem. The issue comes up when it’s time to renew a multi-year contract, when market prices have fallen significantly since the contract was originally [...]
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Debbie Wilson | January 27, 2011 | Comments Off
Attention! Do you maintain punch-out catalogs for Ariba, SciQuest, Coupa, SAP, others? Are you logging onto your customers’ Oracle iSupplier Network? Are you submitting spreadsheets of product data for your customers to upload into their e-procurement system? If yes, I hope you might consider taking a short survey on your experience working with e-procurement vendors. [...]
Comments Off
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Debbie Wilson | January 21, 2011 | Comments Off
Pricing Trends – Up, and Down! Pulling out of recession is great, no? More jobs, more business, more shopping . . well, but not everything is good about an improving economy. Specifically, it’s not unusual for post-recession times to herald price increases and an uptick in inflation. After all, during down times, sellers usually cut [...]
Comments Off
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Debbie Wilson | January 10, 2011 | 5 Comments
Social Networking Comes to Procurement? I’ve been asked several times over the past year by internal colleagues and various vendors whether I see demand for “Facebook” type social networking functionality in procurement applications. My response is usually something along the lines of, “You’ve got to be kidding!” even though I love Facebook and I use [...]
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Debbie Wilson | December 16, 2010 | Comments Off
A client recently asked me, “What does it take to be a preferred customer?” The cute answer is to spend more and pay more! But all silliness aside, this is a relevant and appropriate question. Procurement often gets so bogged down in delivering cost reductions that it has little time left for supplier development. But [...]
Comments Off
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Debbie Wilson | November 23, 2010 | Comments Off
Work in Progress It’s hard to believe that Thanksgiving is upon us, and shortly after 2010 will be wrapping up. Another sign that I am getting older – every year goes by faster! With the new year comes time for agenda planning and my plan for anuary is to start the process of re-evaluating the [...]
Comments Off
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Debbie Wilson | November 19, 2010 | Comments Off
This week, the bulk of my energy has been devoted to our annual IT Financial, Procurement and Asset Management summit. As usual it has been a real pleasure to meet so many of my clients in person. One interesting theme I have heard over the past few days is that those organizations that have chalked [...]
Comments Off
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
