Spend Matters Launches a New Membership Advisory Program
Spend Matters is pleased to announce a new membership advisory program that will provide guidance to vendors and services providers through formal and informal interactions. After talking to numerous technology and services providers about the dearth of advisory services in the Spend Management sector that are worth spending a nickel on -- AMR, Aberdeen, and to a lesser degree Forrester, are the only ones I can honestly recommend to my clients -- I've decided to launch a new type of service especially for providers in the Spend Management arena (which would include the procurement, sourcing, supply chain, and design areas). This new Spend Matters offering will provide an advisory service to providers outside of the project and program work that my firm, Azul Partners, is traditionally involved with. Current and future Spend Matters sponsors will have access to the Membership Advisory Program as part of their sponsorship package, but the difference is that I am now opening up this type of advisory service to non-sponsors as well.
I've decided to offer this formalized advisory service because of increasing demand and requests from providers and rather than creating one-off packages each time we talk to someone who is interested, I thought that creating a prix fix approach would make sense . Based on the input from providers whom I have spoken with, I've created an offering of services that all advisory members will get for joining. This includes unlimited phone discussion time throughout the contract length (limited to 60 minutes per call). These calls could be used to discuss such areas as: market trends, customer buying habits, sales tactics / approaches, and pricing trends, among other possibilities. In addition, members will also receive one day of on-site advisory per year (which could take the form of strategy facilitation, product discussions, solution positioning pow-wows, etc). And last, advisory members will be invited to a one-day, invitation only event in Chicago to discuss industry trends, directions, and forecasts.
For those providers who do not wish to sign up, I will remain more than happy to continue to talk, take media calls, etc. I abhor the whole pay to play concept, and I love the ability of the blogosphere to level the playing field for tiny start-ups and perennial industry giants alike. But the advantage of the advisory practice for members is that it will become an outlet for more formal, confidential discussions and advisory work outside of traditional one-way briefing interactions and specified consulting projects and marketing programs.
If you're interested in learning more, drop me a line: jbusch@spendmatters.com
- Jason Busch
I've decided to offer this formalized advisory service because of increasing demand and requests from providers and rather than creating one-off packages each time we talk to someone who is interested, I thought that creating a prix fix approach would make sense . Based on the input from providers whom I have spoken with, I've created an offering of services that all advisory members will get for joining. This includes unlimited phone discussion time throughout the contract length (limited to 60 minutes per call). These calls could be used to discuss such areas as: market trends, customer buying habits, sales tactics / approaches, and pricing trends, among other possibilities. In addition, members will also receive one day of on-site advisory per year (which could take the form of strategy facilitation, product discussions, solution positioning pow-wows, etc). And last, advisory members will be invited to a one-day, invitation only event in Chicago to discuss industry trends, directions, and forecasts.
For those providers who do not wish to sign up, I will remain more than happy to continue to talk, take media calls, etc. I abhor the whole pay to play concept, and I love the ability of the blogosphere to level the playing field for tiny start-ups and perennial industry giants alike. But the advantage of the advisory practice for members is that it will become an outlet for more formal, confidential discussions and advisory work outside of traditional one-way briefing interactions and specified consulting projects and marketing programs.
If you're interested in learning more, drop me a line: jbusch@spendmatters.com
- Jason Busch
Comments
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Are you trying to put us now out-of-date regular consultants and old-fashioned bloggers out of business? ;-)
# Posted By Over The Hill?
| 7/25/06 6:45 AM
I can hear Jamie Bedard screaming right now....
# Posted By Screaming
| 7/25/06 12:35 PM
My decision to launch a formalized advisory practice came from a number of requests for offering an advisory service outside of sponsorships and consulting work -- it had nothing to do with the existing capabilities of other advisors or analyst firms. As someone who has advised a number of vendors on which firms to work with in recent years and influenced millions of dollars of analyst spend in my career, I can honestly say that I believe in the analyst model, and I'm not trying to replace it. But in my book, there is only one firm which is currently set up to offer truly strategic advice on an advisory basis to the Spend Management market, and that's AMR. And they do a great job doing it, and I'll continue to recommend to my clients that they work with them and direct business their way. Regarding Aberdeen, the firm has done excellent work carving out a new market niche, but even their leadership does not consider the firm an analyst shop in the traditional sense. In my view, they are a new type of industry research / marketing / lead generation firm. They also have a highly valuable place in the market, and are at the top of my recommendation list (but for different reasons than AMR). The wildcards right now are Gartner (with the addition of Debbie Wilson) and Forrester. We'll see if either or both pursue this sector seriously going forward.
# Posted By Jason Busch
| 7/25/06 1:27 PM
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