{"id":4717,"date":"2009-05-03T17:08:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-03T17:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/phil-fersht-on-service-provider-rankings-make-the-experts-accountable-not-faceless-brands\/"},"modified":"2009-05-03T17:08:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-03T17:08:00","slug":"phil-fersht-on-service-provider-rankings-make-the-experts-accountable-not-faceless-brands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/phil-fersht-on-service-provider-rankings-make-the-experts-accountable-not-faceless-brands\/","title":{"rendered":"Phil Fersht on service provider rankings:  make the experts accountable, not faceless brands"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Vinnie Mirchandani has his <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/dealarchitect.typepad.com\/deal_architect\/2009\/04\/your-next-outsourcer-sodexo.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>latest take<\/em><\/a><em> on the constant controversy of third-party researchers, consultants and associations&#0160;compiling rankings of service providers.&#0160; This time the <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.outsourcingprofessional.org\/content\/23\/152\/1858\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>IAOP&#39;s Global Services 100<\/em><\/a><em>&#0160;is being questioned.<\/em>&#0160; <\/p>\n<p>We&#39;ve also had some banter&#0160;about&#0160;the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/2009\/02\/the-black-book-of-what.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Black Book of Outsourcing<\/a>&#0160;on this site, which&#0160;made such a noise with&#0160;its constant rankings of service providers, that Datamonitor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/2009\/04\/datamonitor-goes-to-hollywood.html\">decided to buy them<\/a> to hop on this bandwagon.&#0160; And we&#39;ve never even got to discussing the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.globalservices100.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Global Services 100<\/a>, or sever<span id=\"fck_dom_range_temp_1241384276558_461\"><\/span>al other rankings that come out periodically.&#0160; <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ben Johnson 1988\" border=\"0\" class=\"at-xid-6a00d8356fb76c69e201157069ecb2970b \" src=\"http:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/images\/6a00d8356fb76c69e201157069ecb2970b-800wi.jpg\" style=\"FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 5px\" title=\"Ben Johnson 1988\" \/>Moreover, some &quot;analyst&quot; firms make a living ranking service providers, while barely bothering to talk to their customers,&#0160;and selling white papers to the winners&#0160;so they can&#0160;flout their success (you all know who you are).<\/p>\n<p>Personally, as an analyst and advisor, I find these lists useful &#8211; I sometimes find out about some provider I didn&#39;t know a lot about, and they draw attention to who&#39;s doing well at the\n<\/p>\n<p><!-- pagebreak --><br \/>\nmoment.&#0160; But that&#39;s all I care about.&#0160;If these entities produced a directory of service providers, it would be a valuable resource to the industry at large.&#0160; But that isn&#39;t really&#0160;the case; why produce free information of you can&#39;t sell it as marketing collateral?<\/p>\n<p>What worries me is the following:<\/p>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span>\n<p>These entities make the majority&#0160;(or all)&#0160;of their revenues from service providers;<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<li><span>\n<p>However accurate these rankings may be, they always make errors which can cause buyers to make poor purchasing decisions, or service providers to be unfairly discounted from a down-select process<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/li>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>So what can entities to do make these rankings more credible?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>If I am advising a client in an area where I need some additional input or validation, I want to talk to the resident expert in that field.&#0160; At the end of the day, it&#39;s the recognized experts who have withstood the test of time&#0160;that can give you the real deal when it comes to rankings.&#0160; A true expert in a niche area, for example application&#0160;development&#0160;services, would be in constant contact with all the service providers, their clients&#39; successes and&#0160;traumas,&#0160;and have a unique view on who really is delivering the goods, versus who is struggling.&#0160; And&#0160;we don&#39;t really want some fluffy top-ten score,&#0160;we want to know exactly where each service provider has scale, expertise, language, technology and process acumen.&#0160; That&#39;s the<em> real info<\/em> customers need.&#0160; The only benefit of rankings is for service providers to send out press releases boasting about&#0160;their &quot;performance&quot; and add more marketing vapourware to PowerPoint decks. Oh, and they need to pony up significant cash to whomever compiled the list.&#0160; But it&#39;s cheap point-scoring, so what do they care?<\/p>\n<p>Hence, in my world, a service provider ranking&#0160;is&#0160;only really credible when the expert&#39;s <em>personal<\/em> name and brand is attached.&#0160; <em>Someone<\/em> is being held accountable, as opposed to some faceless corporate brand, which masks any real accountability.&#0160; At least an analyst firm is attaching an analyst&#39;s name to that ranking list, so that analyst has some skin in the game.&#0160; A good analyst will&#0160;normally produce correct performance indicators.&#0160; A poor analyst will make mistakes, or simply&#0160;not have&#0160;good industry&#0160;connections or guidance,&#0160;and likely not last long in this economy. <\/p>\n<p>Strong stuff I know, but it has to be said&#8230; your views are more than welcome.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vinnie Mirchandani has his latest take on the constant controversy of third-party researchers, consultants and associations&#0160;compiling rankings of service providers.&#0160;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"organization":[],"ppma_author":[19],"class_list":["post-4717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-confusing-outsourcing-information"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Phil Fersht on service provider rankings: make the experts accountable, not faceless brands - Horses for Sources | No Boundaries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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