Ketera Connect Day 1

1 comment April 24th, 2006 David Bush - Iasta

This is also the only day, for me at least. I will miss Andrew Bartels tomorrow unfortunately but business opportunity beckons, so I will sharpen up for Bay Area traffic.

As I mentioned previously, Ketera did a nice job with the set up of the event, venue chosen and topics covered. Steve told me that in previous years Ketera Connect was done in the conference room, so this is a huge step up in event planning. I was impressed with the number of attendees and companies represented. Ketera works with some pretty big companies and I am quite sure people would be surprised at some of our joint clients (for those that do not know, Iasta provides the sourcing platform for Ketera clients).

I did my presentation on strategic sourcing and e-Sourcing from the functional and industry overview perspective. I saw a lot of nodding heads and got no heckling so I had to assume my topic was sufficiently covered and explained. I followed Kulvir Gill from Barrick Corp in Toronto, who spoke from the user perspective of Spend Analysis. He did a great job and had many interesting perspectives from the trenches, specifically about how there is still a lot of work to do, even after it goes live, but is worth it to have visibility into the spend. Following him was a good idea, since you will not get much benefit out of e-Sourcing without first identifying what you are buying. I was told after my portion that there was a very good reception and interest in learning more about e-Sourcing. Most of the attendees were not active users.

After I wrapped up, I was able to have lunch with Steve Savignano - Chairman of the Board, Tom Foody - CFO and Burton Goldfield, the newly appointed CEO. It was good to be able to spend some time with the Ketera brain trust as they definitely have big plans. Ketera has multiple “on-ramps” into to client needs which go well beyond the Iasta standard fare including: invoicing, e-proc and spend analysis. Ketera has some interesting ideas for revenue generation which I will keep to myself as I am not sure what parts of the lunch conversation were market knowledge.

Speaking of Steve, I was personally curious about last week’s press release regarding the appointment of Burton. I made a point of deciphering what was going on to make sure this was not another revolving executive door like ebreviate. Burton comes from Hyperion and took personal risk to leave that position to lead the efforts at Ketera. The way I understand things, Steve is more of a visionary and strategist and Burton has the operational disciplines to execute the current plan in place at Ketera. Steve had always intended for this and personally led the search for a competent CEO. Some may think it is spin, but I think it was part of the plan.

I guess that is about all I can remember, I hope it lives up to jbusch’s pressure cooker expectations even though I chose not to make sophomoric quips like Category in the Tank or emPtoris, speaking of which…exactly when will they announce what everyone knows?

Entry Filed under: General, Spend Analysis, e-Sourcing Marketplace

Live from Ketera Connect

Add comment April 24th, 2006 David Bush - Iasta

Nothing going on yet, but first impressions are very positive from a location standpoint. Ketera chose a hotel in San Jose called Hotel Valencia which is very nice (I figured out this morning why everything smells orangey, I am smart like that). The area is a little like a California high rent version of Bourbon street except replace Pat O’Briens and The Dungeon with Borders and the Cheesecake Factory. I am looking forward to getting into the presentations and meeting the people, hopefully I get to learn some things.

I have already seen that Ketera has changed their logo and tag line to - The Proven Spend Solution and would imagine they have some plans to launch a pretty aggressive campaign in the Spend Management space.

Entry Filed under: General, Technology, e-Sourcing Marketplace