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PurchSearch: Scouring the Internet for Procurement Gold

October 31st, 2008 · by Justin Fogarty · 5 Comments · best practices, sourcing, supply management

I recently laid out my thoughts how Web 3.0 will change sourcing and procurement by increasing the volume of information about buyers and suppliers. B the time that evolution occurs, the internet itself will be massive. Actually…what am I saying…it already is massive and that’s why everyone relies so heavily on Google to index everything.

But the problem is, Google still returns a LOT of junk you have to sift through to find what you want, hence the rise of social news sites and blogs, which trust the wisdom of the masses or an editor to cut through the noise and bring you meaningful content. But where does that leave searches?

If Next Level Purchasing’s PurchSearch is any indication of where things are headed, customized search engines will play a part in filtering out the irrelevant hits and returning only content from trusted, pre-approved sources. I’ll let Charles explain:

I spoke with Next Level Purchasing about how PurchSearch works and what sites it indexes. The system actually utilizes Google’s Custom Search technology, so you know it’s indexing and search algorithms are top notch. The results are from about a dozen purchasing related blogs (including SupplyExcellence) and sites, as well as some companies with widely respected procurement operations. And in the spirit of collaboration and improvement, they are open to suggestions for additional sites to include in the system.

It’s an interesting concept and from my experimentation on PurchSearch, it does seem to return some very relevant hits. So, I would recommend giving it a try next time you’re headed towards Google.

Justin Fogarty is Managing Editor of Supply Excellence. For any questions or feedback on the blog or its contributors, Justin can be reached at jfogarty[at]ariba.com.

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5 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Doug Hudgeon // Oct 31, 2008 at 10:34 am

    We spent a weekend putting together a Google custom search mashup that takes a list of your suppliers and spend with those suppliers and creates a custom search engine that contains the websites of your suppliers.

    When you search for a product or service, it shows your suppliers and your relative spend with each supplier.

    The site is here: http://www.suppliersearchengine.com and you can see an example search engine here: http://suppliersearchengine.com/search/h/7283457aa0ce554fe8cbc21171de8806

  • 2 Jeff Gordon // Oct 31, 2008 at 1:00 pm

    PurchSearch is an interesting idea. But all it can ultimately do is return semi-to-relevant links about the organization with which you’re planning to do business.

    But, searching is second gen (1st gen was the data itself, second is finding ways to present the data). True 3rd generation tools would go beyond searching into analysis. While I’m not sure I agree with you that 3.0 will involve making decisions based on the recommendations and insights of your network, I do believe that it is decision-making related… but relies more on the ability of an application to aggregate, sift and then pontificate about the data.

    So a search engine, while a little interesting, is, overall, meh.

  • 3 Justin Fogarty // Oct 31, 2008 at 8:26 pm

    Doug, thanks for sharing another interesting application of the Custom Search. Do you have any metrics or even anecdotes for how it’s been used thus far?

  • 4 Justin Fogarty // Oct 31, 2008 at 9:00 pm

    Jeff,

    I agree…sort of. Conceptually I think you’re right on the money. But so far, the best legit analysis relies on human intervention, which has been a flop so far when integrated with search engines (try searching for something besides celebrities or sports on Mahalo http://www.mahalo.com/).

    So I think that still leaves everyone increasingly looking to trusted sources (blogs, news sites, social news, and even their social network - like LinkedIn Groups). And that’s where I see the sharing of personal/company experiences Web 3.0 playing a part.

    But a lot of research is still going to rely on search engines for the foreseeable future. And on that note, I think anything that cuts out some of the noise is a good thing.

    Of course, I could be very wrong. I’m confident there are many people much smarter than me working on scalable, automated analytical tools. But in the mean time, I appreciate anything that helps me get to my answers online faster.

    Justin

  • 5 Doug Hudgeon // Nov 3, 2008 at 10:23 am

    Hi Justin,

    I’ve been surprised by the feedback to date. I thought it would be most useful for procurement staff to provide a high level view of the service offerings across an organisation’s entire supplier base. Instead, category manager’s are using it to create dedicate search engines for their suppliers in specific categories, particularly service suppliers such as legal and recruitment. At this point we don’t know whether this is because category managers are more open to new ideas, have more ready access to the data, or see less risk in uploading their limited supplier data to an external website (which is a source of concern even given the security measures we put in place).

    Of course, that’s the great thing about a mash-up. You can build it quickly, put it out there and see what happens.

    After seeing how it was being used, I created a sample supplier search engine that includes the top 100 law firms globally:
    http://suppliersearchengine.com/search/h/6a6731cea3462d8273ea1982bc6f67f9

    Try searching for “credit derivatives”.

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