It's been awhile since we've posted what's going on with Spend Matters UK, Healthcare Matters, and MetalMiner. See below for what Peter, Tom, and Lisa/Taras/Stuart are up to.

From Spend Matters UK/Europe
PRGX and more on Spend Analytics – essential tools for procurement -- We introduced PRGX and their SpendTrax spend visibility platform here recently – we were impressed at our demo by its speed and usability. In part 2 today, we'll look at what you can do in terms of more detailed supplier analysis using this platform. The supplier management tool enables the user to dig into a specific supplier in more detail. As well as taking the basic spend data – probably from one or multiple ERP feeds – the platform enables the user to bring in other relevant external feeds, for instance from information providers like D & B or Bureau Van Dijk.

Management Consultancies Awards – saving lives, saving money... -- If you follow me on Twitter, you will have got all the results from the Management Consultancies Association annual awards dinner last Thursday. It was a very good event, even if it felt a little strange personally ; it's usually a CIPS event when I'm in Black Tie, and I'm used to knowing loads of people. Last week, 600 diners – and I knew about 4 people there!

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A Spend Matters fan favorite (and ours to write), the Friday Rant often spawns a lot of dialogue. Please enjoy the following collection of the most popular posts from this fall.

Friday Rant: Do We Need a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for Supply Chain CSR Practices? -- Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) has now become one of the drivers in deploying technology platforms to monitor and assure certain practices of supply chain partners in terms of supplier management. The FCPA is a rather elegant piece of policy that essentially prohibits businesses and individuals from engaging in behavior that would not be allowed domestically -- when it comes to bribery and related activities to solicit business involving foreign officials and the companies/entities they represent. Businesses must also keep audit trails of activities that monitor transactions and related interactions (hence the benefits of deploying an automated supplier management platform to manage some compliance aspects of the act).

Friday Rant: Unilever and Beyond -- The Rise of Purpose-Built Procurement Applications (Part 1) -- If we look back the history of spend management tools in the past decade, we've seen a constant march to sameness from providers. Far too many vendors have been racing in a functional parity derby, jockeying their applications horses to a type of sameness designed to be the 80% solution -- inclusive of software and sometimes services -- that organizations must fit their processes around (at least in the case of more sophisticated buying organizations who have a point of view over what an application should do). As an example, in the area of spend visibility, one of the largest providers in the broader sector has designed a data acquisition process for a typical buying organization with specific system request fields. Yet when a more sophisticated company worked with this provider and sent over extensive AP and invoice line-item level details from across their spend categories, the initial situation was...(Part 2)

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We've covered a lot of viewpoints on Ariba over the years. In a series of two "best of" posts, we'll reminisce on the ups and downs of 2011 and looking into 2012.

Ariba Supplier Network Alternatives: Oracle (Part 1) -- This post is part of a Spend Matters series looking at Ariba Supplier Network alternatives. We will cover each Ariba supplier network alternative in a series of three-part posts beginning with the provider's basic background in the area. Following this initial installment, we will then examine their solution approach and Ariba/third party systems integration. Finally, we will provide our own summary and analysis of the provider's overall capabilities. Of the two largest ERP providers, Oracle decided early on in its eProcurement... (Part 2 and Part 3)

Ariba Supplier Network Alternatives: Ketera/Rearden (Part 1) -- This post is part of a Spend Matters series looking at Ariba Supplier Network alternatives. We will cover each Ariba supplier network alternative beginning with each provider's basic background in the area and then their solution approach and Ariba/third party systems integration. Finally, we will provide our own summary and analysis of the provider's overall capabilities. Ketera was recently acquired by Rearden Commerce (for more information on this news, please see our coverage: here and here). Before the acquisition, however... (Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4)

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Oracle OpenWorld Dispatch 1: Overload, Openness, Fragmentation, Glimpses of Some Solid Applications -- I spent two completely scheduled days at Oracle OpenWorld this week (apologies to everyone else I know in the area who I did not have a chance to visit, but I can't recall packing so many things into 48 hours before). Even though I'll be sorting through my notes and sharing the highlights around Oracle Fusion Procurement, Oracle Supplier Lifecycle Management/Supplier Hub, Oracle Spend Classification, Oracle PeopleSoft's new faceted SRM navigation and more, I thought I'd first sum up some general procurement-focused impressions from the show.

Oracle's Endeca Acquisition -- An Initial Take -- Earlier this week, Oracle announced it had entered into an agreement to buy Endeca. For those in the procurement, supply chain and manufacturing worlds who don't know Endeca, you should. They represent what Spend Matters believes is a truly next generation toolset for managing not only general ledger, invoice and related spend data, but more important, combining these financials insights with material information, part specification data, warranty claims insight and many forms of third-party structured (and even unstructured) data. Yet because they've been going in so many directions (e.g., fueling lots of consumer sites from a search/faceted/guided navigation/shopping perspective), the manufacturing vertical as well as the emphasis on selling into procurement and supply chain was only given limited focus at Endeca. Here at Spend Matters, we hope Oracle changes this.

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A company's sourcing strategy can be a make it or break it element of success or failure. This year, Spend Matters (and sister site MetalMiner) have put a lot more focus into smart sourcing and the tactics behind it. (Shameless plug: we're even throwing a conference on it!)

New Research -- Market-Informed Sourcing: A Game-Changer for Procurement -- Peter Smith (my UK colleague) doesn't give himself enough credit for his deep knowledge of how procurement technology works. He also fully understands the importance of approaching technology from a pragmatic business perspective first rather than through the geeky lenses that we're sometimes guilty of including in our Spend Matters research from this side of the pond. Peter's latest Spend Matters research paper, Market-Informed Sourcing: A game-changer for Procurement, presents an ideal case for changing procurement's functional approach to negotiation and supplier management by leveraging advanced sourcing technology.

Supplier Discovery via Networks/Marketplaces Must Correctly Fit In Sourcing Processes (Part 1) -- In the early years at Spend Matters, I remember being impressed by the concept of Open Ratings, a vendor that sat between the software and content worlds. Open Ratings' solution attempted to predict whether or not a supplier would remain financially viable based on a combination of financial, credit and related inputs. Although their execution was not always perfect -- and they were held hostage by some of their content providers over third-party data until D&B, one of their major content sources, finally acquired them -- it is clear that Open Ratings was the pioneering solution voice in the supply chain risk management sector.

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Supplier Enablement and P2P Roadblocks -- Catalog and Content Management (Part 1) -- One of the areas where companies often fail when it comes to bringing as much indirect spend under management as possible is catalog and content management. These tools enable the P2P experience by focusing on supplier self-service, multi-catalog search, configuration, and what we'll term "virtual punch-out," which includes distributed content search, aggregation and presentation of information (not to mention the application of specific rules to this distributed data). Providers in these areas can enable technically savvy business users (not IT) to administer the overall content and catalog management program once it's up and running. (Part 2)

Examining SAP Supplier InfoNet (Part 1) -- In the early years at Spend Matters, I remember being impressed by the concept of Open Ratings, a vendor that sat between the software and content worlds. Open Ratings' solution attempted to predict whether or not a supplier would remain financially viable based on a combination of financial, credit and related inputs. Although their execution was not always perfect -- and they were held hostage by some of their content providers over third-party data until D&B, one of their major content sources, finally acquired them -- it is clear that Open Ratings was the pioneering solution voice in the supply chain risk management sector. (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5)

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For the next week and a half, the Spend Matters team is taking a much-needed holiday break (we have a lot of eggnog and 10%+ holiday beer to source). We'll be running a lead post every day (so you can still get your analysis on if the mood strikes), and will be featuring a daily "Best of" through January 2. Happy Holidays, and be sure to check in on the 26th for our Santa vs. Hanukkah Harry smack down!

SciQuest: A First Step to Integrating Sourcing and Supplier Management with P2P (Part 1) -- SciQuest made the rather smart -- in terms of both valuation and product and upsell synergy -- acquisition of AECSoft late last year (see our coverage of the deal here, here, and here). Just over half a year later, the company has taken the first integration steps to joining the two separate solutions together. According to this announcement from last week, "the solution reflects the first phase in integrating SciQuest's eProcurement suite with the supplier management and sourcing technology from AECsoft...The new release integrates Sourcing Director into the base modular source-to-settle solution suite. This integration includes seamless process flows from requisitioning to conducting sourcing events and from sourcing events back into the requisitioning process." ( Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 )

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Happy Thanksgiving! We hope you are spending your day enjoying good food, company and conversation (and football). In celebration of the holiday, we put together a few of our favorite past Turkey Day posts for you.

Spend Management: Thanksgiving Style -- Smart Money recently ran a great comparison of the costs of an organic/non-organic Thanksgiving. Too bad they also did not give us the Fair Trade options as well. Still, from a sourcing perspective, the findings are fascinating indeed, especially considering that they found an organic bird costs roughly 5x what a regular one does. But overall, how do the costs stack up? The story suggests that "the organic version of our turkey-day menu for eight people -- including dinner rolls, a salad and three bottles of organic wine -- totaled $295.36. That puts the organic premium for the meal at $126.35, or 75%, compared with the same shopping list filled with nonorganic options. All figures reflect prices from a New York City location of Whole Foods Market, an Associated Supermarket and a Food Emporium."

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