Headed Down to Perfect Commerce

One thing I love about this job is my flexibility. Because I'm not ruled by a P&L or subject to the whims of a broader organization dictating my travel schedule, I have the time to investigate and delve into things which interest me and that I believe should matter to Spend Matters readers. A few months back, Hamp Wall, Perfect's CEO, challenged me to come down and see for myself the job that the Perfect organization has done in the past 12 months at aligning and integrating all of their disparate acquisitions. This week, I'm taking the trip. I look forward to reporting back on my discoveries. Based on what I've heard so far from customers and others in the past few quarters, it's clear Perfect is no longer the integration train wreck it was a few years back in the immediate aftermath of the Commerce One blow-up. But are they a worthy competitor for new deals when it comes to competing against the source-to-pay ranks of Ariba, SAP, Oracle, Emptoris, BasWare, BravoSolution, Iasta and other leading providers? And should we consider their supplier network and content management approach an alternative to Ariba, Hubwoo, Vinimaya and others? We'll see. I don't see them as often in new deals as I probably should which is not the best sign. But given my limited exposure to only a subset of the dealflow in the market, this is not necessarily an indicator one-way or the other, especially if their renewals are high.

If anyone has any questions they'd like me to probe while I'm visiting Perfect, drop a line (jbusch [at] spendmatters [dot] com).

- Jason Busch