In the first installment of this series, I shared perspectives from Everest Research (courtesy of Supply and Demand Chain Executive) and Horses for Sources on the emerging procurement BPO market. Now, here at Spend Matters we won’t claim to know as much as Everest does about broader adoption trends in overall F&A BPO (let alone the nuances and quirks of each and every deal). Nor are we privy to the 546+ years of accumulated knowledge that Horses for Sources brings to procurement BPO advisory. Readers NB, the 546 years is an official statistic shared with me by their PR people and incidentally, this is why we are partnering with them on our research in the area — that and the fact that their fearless leader is always fast and loose to plunk down the corporate Amex to pick up the single malt tab. No, we’re not the outsourcing gurus here at Spend Matter, but we do know enough about the inner workings of procurement and have enough experience analyzing procurement BPO from an insider perspective to be useful in offering up an analysis as well.
In this second installment of this series looking at procurement BPO, I’d like to begin by picking up on some Horses for Sources commentary suggesting that the current technology landscape aside BPO “bears bad news for Ariba, which pulled back from a BPO strategy in recent years and has failed to progress its attempts to partner with HP on deals.” In essence, I agree with Phil that Ariba is approaching this market from an area of weakness given their past (not just counting HP, mind you). In the past six years, Ariba has developed a less than stellar reputation in the market with partners for what’s collectively known in the services business as “fee hoarding” — something far more common than you might think, and not unique to Ariba…
