Of all of the procurement blogs that are still out there \u2013 many have come and gone quietly over the last five years \u2013 there is only one that I know of that has been active longer than the Purchasing Certification Blog. That blog is Spend Matters, which beat me to the procurement blogging punch by just a few months.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t miss updates on Procurement & Supply Chain, Subscribe here!<\/p>\n
Once authored strictly by founder Jason Busch, Spend Matters has steadily tossed a few more voices into the mix. Busch still cranks out around three posts a day but, though his output has remained constant, his posts as a percentage of total posts are far from 100% as additional authors increasingly fill Spend Matters\u2019 virtual pages with their insights and opinions. Beyond the content growth, Spend Matters also has two sister sites, leaving one to question whether Spend Matters can still be appropriately labeled a \u201cblog.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an exclusive interview with the Purchasing Certification Blog earlier this week, Busch argued that Spend Matters is still \u201cvery much a blog \u2013 but also a number of other things as well!\u201d Indeed, the company\u2019s recent expansion activities are pushing the boundaries of the traditional definition of blog.<\/p>\n
For example, last week, Spend Matters launched what I consider to be the most ambitious of its recent expansion plans by partnering with the UK-based Procurement Excellence blog to form Spend Matters UK\/Europe. When discussing how he identified the need for a dedicated UK\/European site, Busch saw something that Europe lacked and the US had an abundance of: well-researched opinions about procurement technologies and practices. \u201cThere\u2019s not a strong source of opinion when it comes to what is working and what is not in the UK and Europe \u2013 it\u2019s not informed by any type of practitioner perspective,\u201d Busch says. \u201cI think that practitioners are looking for guidance and opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the branding of both the US and UK\/European sites will be uniform, don\u2019t expect that Spend Matters UK\/Europe will simply be regurgitating Spend Matters US\u2019 content with European spellings (e.g., programme vs. program, organisation vs. organization, labour vs. labor, etc.). While many of the same high-level themes will be covered by both sites, Busch promises that the new UK\/Europe site will focus on the characteristics of procurement, technology, and business unique to Europe. \u201cWe might have a write-up on, say, Emptoris, SAP, or Ariba but have a different take [in Europe] in terms of positioning products based on features, functions, capabilities which we think are more important to highlight for an audience there\u201d versus the audience in the US, he says.<\/p>\n
For such a grand joint venture, I was surprised to learn that Busch and Peter Smith, the founder of Procurement Excellence and the head of Spend Matters UK\/Europe, met each other through the blogosphere. \u201cWe had lots of people in common but I started reading his site [and] he started reading mine,\u201d Busch recalls. \u201cWe connected at various points and finally got connected face-to-face.\u201d They hit it off so well that within a year had decided to partner with each other.<\/p>\n
Another recent change that went into effect at the same time as the UK\/Europe site launch was Spend Matters\u2019 introduction of a new tag line: \u201cFor Your Business and Your Life.\u201d While Busch would from time-to-time venture outside of corporate procurement topics in the past, this new tag line accompanied by authors who wrote about non-procurement issues had me curious whether readers would notice an increasing percentage of non-procurement topics on Spend Matters.<\/p>\n
Busch cautions his audience not to worry that Spend Matters\u2019 dedication to procurement will be diluted. \u201cOur focus will absolutely stay on buying: There\u2019s buying in our business, there\u2019s buying in governments, and there\u2019s buying in our lives,\u201d Busch states, noting that he and his team want \u201cto really get across that what we do in the workplace in procurement and supply chain often has a lot of transferable elements to our personal lives as well in terms of total cost [and] in terms of looking at the longevity of a decision in terms of was it the right one two or three years after the fact versus not.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you noticed that Spend Matters\u2019 aggressive expansion had begun at the same time that Purchasing Magazine stopped publication, you may be wondering if that was a coincidence or if Busch wanted to fill the void left behind. \u201cI did see a big opportunity at that point but it wasn\u2019t at all to get into the trade publishing business in terms of print,\u201d Busch reveals. \u201cWe think the world is going online, we think people value opinion over just reporting now, we think people are getting things in more digestible sound bites than before\u201d which enabled Spend Matters to appeal to Purchasing Magazine\u2019s audience without adopting the bleeding-to-death print model.<\/p>\n
With the longevity of Spend Matters, one can sense that there is more expansion and innovation ahead. In closing the interview, I asked Busch what to expect in the future for Spend Matters that might be of particular significance to readers of the Purchasing Certification Blog. \u201cWe are big on getting the message out there on education and training and you\u2019ll see continued coverage of that next year,\u201d he promises. \u201cWe think there\u2019s, in general, just a good opportunity to educate folks on their options for learning out there\u2026We want to make sure we\u2019re covering that sector as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
I personally am looking forward to what\u2019s to come in the next few years from Spend Matters. As it evolves, I am betting that it will look less and less like its humble beginnings as a one-man blog but continue to be one of the most valuable, go-to resources for the procurement community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Of all of the procurement blogs that are still out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procurement"],"yoast_head":"\n