Sourcing Excellence » Technology

Techcrunch reviews: Qik vs Kyte vs Flixwagon

admin — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 08:01:28 +0000

Techcrunch test out the top three mobile livestreaming apps Qik, Kyte and Flixwagon. Qik is my clear winner!

“Over the course of the last year we’ve seen an explosion of startups looking to take streaming video to the mobile phone. Smartphones with high-speed data plans and video cameras are becoming increasingly commonplace, and many users are eager to turn their phones into handheld recording studios, even at the cost of video quality.”

Ariba’s supplier network offers a bright future

admin — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:52:29 +0000

Tiernan Ray at Barrons predicts a bright future for Ariba, if they are able to control costs and continue the growth of subscription sales.

“SOME CORPORATE TURNAROUNDS FARE WELL IN RECESSIONS, thanks to their above-average earnings-growth. Dot-com flameout Ariba (ticker: ARBA) has the chops to be among them. Its shares have a reasonable multiple, and the software vendor has muscled up its online, commission-based marketplace, which helps companies manage supply-spending. Meanwhile, the stock’s still in the office-park dumpster.

Ariba shares hit an all-time high of $169 in 2000 amid the buzz for B2B, or business-to-business, software companies. But like other 1990s tech darlings, it couldn’t turn a profit then, and fell hard, as low as 5, in the new century: Now the shares are around 16, and Ariba’s business is showing signs of life.”

The full article and associated video can be found on the Barrons website - Ariba — Dot-com Flameout’s New Fire

SciQuest Announces Partnership with Lawson Software

admin — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:16:27 +0000

Lawson’s customers can leverage the Lawson Procurement Punchout application to integrate with SciQuest’s Spend Director(TM) solution-an on-demand eprocurement platform that combines the catalog management and supplier enablement capabilities procurement professionals need with the familiar online shopping experience users want.

Fieldglass steps back from Services Procurement

markperera — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:49:05 +0000

Fieldglass and IQNavigator have been leading the market in the Services Procurement space for the last 6-8 years. However it seems like Jai and his team at Fieldglass have made a very clever move bringing permanent and direct hire functionality to their platform. Previously both solutions focused on providing functionality to manage contract/contingent labour within blue chip companies, streamlining their processes, managing risk and realising substantial costs savings. But in almost all cases their customers would require another system (ATS - applicant tracking system eg. Taleo or Vurv) to manage their permanent recruitment needs. Thus there was no single view of their human capital - both permanent and contract, with hiring managers requiring two interfaces to manage their full time and short resourcing needs.

With the new Insite 5.0 platform, corporates and the recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) providers have a single tool to manage both permanent and contingent recruitment processes. The Services Procurement space always lay between HR and Procurement, so the move to offer them one solution for all their recruiting should be a big positive for the corporates. Procurement in most blue chips is deeply entrenched in the negotiating of agreements with the recruitment agencies and also managing the relationship on an ongoing basis. But permanent recruitment spend is an area where procurement does not have so much input. Thus for first time the unified system should now give the business a single view of its spend of it human capital spend and also manage direct hires.

I presume this change of direction was driven by the needs of the RPO providers in the first instance, as they look to implement one solution to manage new customers human capital spend. Interesting IQNavigator have taken a slightly different direction by offering their own managed service platform, which would potentially compete with that of the RPO and BPO players. I guess only time will tell which business case will be more successful.

Fieldglass (www.fieldglass.com) - Fieldglass is committed to providing intelligent solutions that help companies successfully acquire contingent workers, services and direct hires. An industry-leader, Fieldglass recognizes the changing organizational landscape and complex challenges that global enterprises face today. With that in mind, coupled with years of technology expertise, Fieldglass delivers award-winning InSite software to meet client needs and exceed their expectations.

IQNavigator (www.iqnavigator.com) - IQNavigator, a global company headquartered in Denver, Colorado and with offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, is the leading provider of managed service programs and on-demand services procurement software. Since its inception in 1999, IQNavigator has become recognized as the vendor-neutral market leader in the highly dynamic and fast-growing services procurement and spend management sector, as measured by new customer wins, global deployments, revenue growth, and customer successes.

Email heaven with xobni

markperera — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:12:32 +0000

If you have not already started using xobni yet, take my advice and install it today. It’s a great addition to Outlook and saves me hours time every week.

Xobni offers a new way to organize and search your Outlook email. Xobni creates profiles for each person that emails you. These profiles contain relationship statistics, contact information, social connections, threaded conversations, and shared attachments.

The lastest edition integrates into Linkedin, pulling information from your friends and contacts directly from their LinkedIn profile. Full details of the the Xobni and LinkedIn integration can be found at Xobni blog.

Check out Techcrunch post ‘Xobni: The Super Plugin For Outlook’ for more information on this great little application. You can also see Bill Gates take on Xonbi here. I am a bit puzzled why it Microsoft did’t come with this functionality themselves, but hey at least its here.

Join me and Sourcing Excellence on Friendfeed

markperera — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:20:37 +0000

If your interested to seeing what I am up to, reading and/or sharing on the web outside of my entries on Sourcing Excellence, the best place to find me is over on Friendfeed.

“FriendFeed enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends.”

The team over at Webpage FX have written a post giving a good overview of Friendfeed’s functionality and benefits ‘Friendfeed Explained’. Whilst Duncan Riley @ Techcrunch has also posted an interesting entry explaining why FriendFeed Is This Years Twitter.

My personal page brings together my Twitter feed, Google reader shared feeds, Flickr feed and more http://friendfeed.com/markperera. Additionally I have setup Friendfeed room for Sourcing Excellence ( http://friendfeed.com/rooms/sourcing-excellence ), so people can comment and share their thoughts on the topics covered on Sourcing Excellence.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Meet my second brain – Evernote

markperera — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 08:21:45 +0000

Over the last month I have started using Evernote as my second brain. It’s a great tool to capture and store, well absolutely everything! Rather than me describing what Evernote does, why note hear it directly from from Evernote CEO, Phil Libin.

Erik Schonfeld over at Techcrunch has a written a great review on Evernote -‘Extend Your Brain With Evernote’ which is worth reading, however the best way to see what evernote it to try it out. After trying out Google Notes and Microsoft Onenote in the past I have to say Evernote is definitely my preference, due to its ability to index photos as well standard text.

What is evernote?

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

What’s the point of Evernote?

We are all constantly bombarded by information, much more than our brains can handle. So, we end up forgetting all sorts of things.

With Evernote, you can start capturing all of those experiences, ideas, and memories, from both your real and digital life that would otherwise slip away.

Evernote also allows you to share your notes - if you want to see my shared notes you can check out them out here.

Enter the dawn of Sourcing Excellence

markperera — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:46:23 +0000

So it’s been six months since I stepped down as editor of Procurement Leaders and I have finally succumbed to my need to share my thoughts with the world on the topics which interest my business and personal life.

So what are those topics that interest me?

Procurement - funny enough after spending the last four years facilitating one of the most influential buying communities in the Europe, the focus of Sourcing Excellence will around the procurement and sourcing. My day job continues to be strategically drive the Procurement Leaders Network forward, by extending the reach of the membership in Europe and into new regions.

Technology - as a self confessed techy geek, technology is going to another key area that I will be regularly writing about. I am a sucker for all the new shiny technology, whether it is new web app that promises going to save me time managing my email or new type of phone to read my email.

Collaboration - this is a really exciting area for me. Over the last few years technology has provided an endless array of ways for individuals and groups to work together and moving forward it is only going to get more engrained into out day to day lives. Whether it is open sourced software like Wordpress (which this blog is running on) or the Wikipedia it astounds me what the collective group can achieve. With this in mind I am going to use the crowd at much a possible to drive sourcing excellence forward.

Sustainability - whether it’s the fact that I am new father, or my back ground in biology or the growing awareness of society as a whole about what we are doing to our planet, sustainability in all its guises is another area that I am passionate about. My day job obviously gives a lot of insight into corporate buying decisions, so sustainable procurement topic area that I will cover regularly.