Usually, when I receive a Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave notification I dismiss it as most of my readers consider such things to be either industry propaganda or as one so eloquently put it; “a paid infomercial.” Although I do have to say that Forrester got their assessment of Virginia’s eVA right.
By the way, it is probably a good idea to revisit an old poll which asked the question; How much do Gartner et al. Analyst reports influence your decision to select a provider?
Anyway, and for some reason, when I received Bob’s e-mail, I thought that I would check it out. Partly because I still like to keep an open mind, and partly because I have never heard of Bob Solomon. By the way, have you ever heard of Bob?
In a very efficient manner, Bob provided us with his take on the new Forrester report by sharing the players’ M&A activity as well as market caps – although he did mention that “Zycus and Birchstreet have hired top-notch people from the industry to grow their solutions.”
While I am obviously familiar with many of the organizations referenced in the post such as Ivalua and Tradeshift, I am not sure that M&A activity or market cap is a reliable indicator of client success.
Ask The Customer!
Wouldn’t it be great if Forrester or Gartner actually took the time to poll end-user customers to see if their satisfaction with the providers’ solutions lined up with their Wave or Quadrant assessments?
So what about Bob.
Even though his Forrester post was mildly interesting, it was somewhat perfunctory as it added nothing new to our knowledge base. However, it is his piece If PayPal has a Mafia, SAP Ariba has a Gang that will likely motivate me to check out his blog every now and then.
Procurement Insights 
Who Is Bob Solomon @bsolomon10?
Posted on July 20, 2017
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I inadvertently stumbled upon a blog post in my email by Bob Solomon titled The Forrester Wave™: eProcurement, Q2 2017.
Usually, when I receive a Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave notification I dismiss it as most of my readers consider such things to be either industry propaganda or as one so eloquently put it; “a paid infomercial.” Although I do have to say that Forrester got their assessment of Virginia’s eVA right.
By the way, it is probably a good idea to revisit an old poll which asked the question; How much do Gartner et al. Analyst reports influence your decision to select a provider?
Anyway, and for some reason, when I received Bob’s e-mail, I thought that I would check it out. Partly because I still like to keep an open mind, and partly because I have never heard of Bob Solomon. By the way, have you ever heard of Bob?
In a very efficient manner, Bob provided us with his take on the new Forrester report by sharing the players’ M&A activity as well as market caps – although he did mention that “Zycus and Birchstreet have hired top-notch people from the industry to grow their solutions.”
While I am obviously familiar with many of the organizations referenced in the post such as Ivalua and Tradeshift, I am not sure that M&A activity or market cap is a reliable indicator of client success.
Ask The Customer!
Wouldn’t it be great if Forrester or Gartner actually took the time to poll end-user customers to see if their satisfaction with the providers’ solutions lined up with their Wave or Quadrant assessments?
So what about Bob.
Even though his Forrester post was mildly interesting, it was somewhat perfunctory as it added nothing new to our knowledge base. However, it is his piece If PayPal has a Mafia, SAP Ariba has a Gang that will likely motivate me to check out his blog every now and then.
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