
Services Spend Watch: Two Quick Tips For Getting the Most From Your MSP
I’ve been doing a significant amount of research of late in
preparation for an upcoming deep-dive series on the services
procurement market (more on this tomorrow). My research had me speaking with dozens of practitioners, VMS providers, and …

Book Review: CMMI for Services
Could your service firm be better? Are there processes that need some help? Here’s a review of new book on CMMI for Services.

Labor Cost Arbitrage and Procurement Outsourcing: Why is This Still a Topic of Discussion?
Getting up on his virtual sandbox, former analyst Phil Fersht recently proffered his predictions
for the outsourcing market in 2010. Even though Phil is no longer
officially an independent analyst given his role at Cognizant, I still
turn to…

ICG Commerce: The Evolution of a Successful Procurement BPO (Part 1)
Earlier in December, while on a whirlwind tour of the East Coast, I
spent an all-too-brief 90 minutes visiting ICG Commerce, a
provider I’ve spoken with on a number of occasions. In fact, my original
relationship with ICG goes back to my rela…

Is There a New Normal in Procurement Outsourcing?
Now that Phil Fersht has joined the dark side of the force — leaving AMR Research to work for an outsourcing provider — can we still take him seriously as an objective industry observer? Of course, especially considering the continued quality of hi…

Should You Ever Bypass an RFP Process?
Over on The Strategic Sourcerer, there’s a useful post that examines when it might make sense to bypass an RFP to better engage a list of potential suppliers or bidders for a project. But is there ever a place for breaking with the routine RFP part o…