I received an e-mail earlier this morning from a friend -- let's call her Sally -- exclaiming that she finally got what she deserves from a recent salary negotiation. Sally is in her early twenties and works as a medical technician at a very large East coast teaching hospital. She is also pursuing a MS degree during her evenings and weekends, and entered her current position a few years ago upon graduating with a BS degree. Her expertise and job responsibilities have steadily grown over this period, and the institution has increased her remuneration by small annual percentages. Two weeks ago, the division director presented Sally with yet another small increase for the coming fiscal year. Despite the current employment climate, Sally said "thanks, but you’ll have to do much better than that."

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The next time Jon Hansen hides behind rhetoric and language (e.g., "agent-based, metaprise visibility") vs. logic, shoot me, please. It's not just that he fails to logically attack my argument, instead hiding behind supposed academic rigor and obfuscation in a recent post (e.g., "In short, adaptability to real-world market conditions as outlined in many of the 700 plus articles and white papers I have written, and maintaining and achieving centralized or collective objectives are not an either or proposition"). It's the patronizing tone within statements like "Jason is out of touch" because he's willing to go against vendor doctrinaire and "my own research". Collectively, these are clearly the type of "he's wrong and I'm right" bullying arguments that Jon attempts to make rather than elucidating debate around the subject.

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I hesitated to write this column because it deviates from my usual ramblings on Spend Management in the workplace and the home -- plus it's also a bit personal. But I hope that by sharing a somewhat private and scary (not to mention painful) experience from an over-the-counter drug side effect earlier this month, that others can avoid my fate. The story begins in early February on a routine trip to Costco. I loaded the kids into the minivan and left my wife at home to have a relaxing Saturday morning while I did damage with the ATM card (getting away from Costco for less than $600 is considered a great success in our household).

After buying the usual items -- mostly food, and other related consumables -- I decide to take advantage of a coupon for a drug called Prevacid. Prevacid, like other strong stomach acid reduction drugs which are typed as proton pump inhibitors (or "PPI"s), is powerful stuff. Still, it's marketed, of course, as having exactly the same impact as its competitors (but the underlying chemistry, as I would soon learn, is different).

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When Tim Minahan left Aberdeen to head to Procuri five years ago, the average tenure of procurement analysts at the firm dropped from years to quarters -- and in some cases, mere months. As some predicted at the time, Aberdeen would never be able to regain the research bench strength that Tim and his team once had. But Andrew Bartolini, who came in a couple of years ago, finally created some stability in the ranks. Earlier this week, however, Andrew quietly left the firm for a new venture that he is in the process of launching. Even though I don't know the details yet -- I am hoping to catch up next week at the Procurement Leaders event in Chicago -- I am sure he'll continue to build on his relationships and work in his previous endeavor. But where does this leave Aberdeen?

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Without question the procurement BPO space is heating up--at least as you listen to providers talking about it and going after it. I've personally not seen an uptick in the percentage of deals resulting in signed agreements, but it does feel like the market may be turning from one of window shoppers to those who are serious about pulling the trigger. Earlier this week, I came across this announcement that EGS, a London-based Spend Management solutions provider, had also launched into this market by signing its first deal with NHS Brent, a UK public sector client. EGS marks yet another entrant into the Procurement BPO market that also delivers other types of procurement solutions and services (many BPO providers like IBM and Accenture have different consulting, services, and even software arms, in the case of IBM).

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Inside many companies, the recession has caused supply risk to move from a secondary issue to a primary concern. Despite this interest, many companies are approaching the topic from a narrow scope, considering only supplier financial viability as a risk driver in their supply chain. According to Spend Matters' affiliate site, MetalMiner, the Chilean 8.8 magnitude earthquake shows that supply disruptions can take many forms--and not just from suppliers going bust or cutting corners. According to MetalMiner, the "disaster serves as a reminder that supply risk in the form of supply disruption remains alive and well for many metal markets." But geographic risk from proximity to moderate or high probability disaster extends beyond the metals markets.

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The most important functional announcement in Coupa's latest release (you can read the first post in this series here) is a new expense reporting capability designed to provide organizations with an integrated system to help capture, in Coupa's words, "all non-payroll spend." Spend Matters' research suggests that this claim is a bit of an exaggeration because Coupa has not yet targeted direct and services spend--nor do they offer spend analysis, sourcing, and contract management tools to manage the supplier/spend lifecycle. But from a basic execution, capture, and reporting standpoint, Coupa can now legitimately claim that their system supports the key requisitioning and T&E lifecycle elements for two key spending areas. As I demoed Coupa's latest release, what became clear is that they had thought through the key process flows from a T&E perspective and all of their key linkages into the procurement process.

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As Spend Matters readers know, supply risk is a topic I've been fascinated by for some time. Going back to an original white paper I wrote with FreeMarkets colleague, Mark Clouse (who is now at AT Kearney) back in 2002, I believed that most organizations failed to quantify the overall exposure they faced from multiple supply chain operating angles -- financial risk, operational risk, demand risk, brand/reputational risk, etc. Since that time, I've not written enough on the subject in an extended format, but the latest Spend Matters Compass Series 2, Spend Visibility and Beyond--Analytics Broader Role in Procurement and Supply Chain, gave me a chance to explore it in a free research brief that we're making available today: The Intersection of Analytics and Supply Chain Risk Management: Using Intelligence to Drive Early Intervention.

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Spend Matters would like to welcome back Sherry Gordon, our resident supplier performance management expert – and my co-conspirator in getting to the bottom of supply risk technology.

There has been a lot of discussion lately on Spend Matters about supply risk. One very challenging area within this arena is sub-tier supply risk. It can be hard enough to find out what's going on with direct suppliers, but what about their suppliers and their suppliers' suppliers? Understanding sub-tier supplier risk is an important challenge, and has long been an area that the aerospace and defense industry has been trying to address. One failure to conform to DoD rules or one supplier problem can adversely impact multiple prime contractors. This situation occurred when an existing government regulation, the Berry Amendment (regarding metals that go into DoD products) was suddenly enforced. It caused over 50 suppliers in violation to be put on a stop-payment list.

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I'm in the process of beginning to research procurement BPO and outsourcing more seriously. Later this year, we'll publish some of this research on Spend Matters and also under the Horses for Sources label. At this point, I've thought about the following topics that I find relevant to procurement and finance organizations considering outsourcing part or all of the source to pay process:

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