Gartner Sticks Its Sourcing Foot in its Mouth

I was talking to someone the other day who asked if I thought that analysts could be good bloggers. I said absolutely, provided they really know their subject matter inside and out. That's because blogging is not forgiving. To write thousands of words, day-in and day-out requires that you really know your stuff -- not just on a high level, but from an in the trenches perspective where it's hard to hide. Over on Supply Excellence, Tim Minahan shows in his post "Gartner Gets it Wrong" how Andy Kyte, specifically, is a great pontificator, but would be dangerous as a blogger.

Tim writes that "In supply markets with high pricing or availability volatility, Andy says, 'The goal should be to decrease the total number of sourcing events and contracts, but to increase the value and longevity of each market engagement model' ... I'm all for increasing value, but reducing the number of sourcing projects you run for a particular category is not always the way to attain best value. In fact, in volatile markets, it may be better to run more frequent and smaller sourcing projects to take advantage of fluctuating capacity and costs, as well as technological advances."

In my view, Tim nails the subject on the head with his retort to Andy's statement. Now, I'm all for finding entertaining and influential conference speakers and Spend Management pundits -- even if they cost over $10K per day, it can be worth it -- but how can you take more than surface level advice seriously from someone who misses such a fundamental concept? To my earlier point, some analysts would make great bloggers -- but others, like Andy, would quickly telecast via RSS to the whole world that they really are not as deep in the subject as many think they are.

- Jason Busch