Over the last few months my startup Coupa Software has continued to grow. It’s been great - but it has meant I’ve had far less time to dedicate to the care and feeding of Procurement Central. So apologies to the readers who had come to expect more prodigious posting.
Also, much of the news - from […]
Read the rest » Technology Nexus
As usual, a day late and a penny short due to the overwhelming interest in my new startup Coupa, I’m pleased to bring you my vieww on what the “Top 3″ issues are holding purchasing departments back.
First, some housekeeping. Michael L. of Sourcing Innovation came up with the idea for this series. Imho, he provides […]
Read the rest » Procurement Central
Competition drives efficiency - we all seem to know and believe that. But what is the corollary?
I’ll bet it has something to do with Trade Shows.
Captive markets are funny things. Suddenly you’ll pay $5 for $1 popcorn (movie theater), $80 for a $40 bottle of wine (restaurant), or $4.50 for a hot dog (baseball game).
I […]
Read the rest » Procurement Central
The enterprise software M&A phase we’ve been going through has certainly reduced the number of large vendors in the market, increasingly turning Oracle and SAP into “restaurants” with software packages varied enough to suit almost all corporate palettes (and wallets).
You might assume the M&A would effectively spell disaster for the independent vendors that remain. But […]
Read the rest » Procurement Central
Peter Goldmacher got downright curmudgeon-ly on Salesforce.com in a recent Cowen & Co. research note. Peter believes Salesforce.com faces a questionable future - and that for reasons he never explains, Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft will now suddenly be competitive with the firm. Too bad analyst reports can’t receive “star ratings” like books do on Amazon.com.
But […]
Read the rest » Procurement Central
In the US if you buy a house (and even when you refinance a loan) chances are you are required to do a property appraisal. And at $400-500 a pop, it sure does add up.
If you try and average the above, then add around 1MM of new home starts to this, you get around 7MM. […]
Read the rest » Procurement Central
With all the politicizing of climate change, it’s tough not to get the ‘Chicken Little - The Sky Is Falling’ feeling when hearing scientists talk about the tough changes seemingly in store for us.
Here are a few links you may want to follow & read:
- NY Times Article: “Emissions Already Affecting Climate, Report Says”
- Intergovernmental […]
Read the rest » Procurement Central
The Purchasing managers’ index slid this month, dropping to 50.9. Here’s a graph of the last year:
Any reading below 50 many interpret as a contracting economy. The more precise interpretation is contraction in US manufacturing output.
People seem to disagree whether the US is falling into a recession, but the PMI trend sure seems to predict […]
Read the rest » Procurement Central
Have you ever been wrong about a vendor? I know I have. We needed a new fence at the house, and I had it all figured out. I went with the guy with references, with the good communication, with all the answers, and… with the drinking problem. He never did finish the fence.
So on my […]
Read the rest » Procurement Central
Glancing through the Handbrake website I noticed an “Ohloh widget” and got curious. So I went over to ohloh.net to see what they did. This was their tagline:
Explore Open Source - Mapping the open source world by collecting objective information on open source projects.
I wanted to see how ohloh worked.. So I went ahead and […]
Read the rest » Procurement Central