ProcureTech Cup 2024 - Tournament Summary

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Hi readers,

📰 In this week’s edition:

• 5 procurement jobs that caught my eye

• The story of how I accidentally created a viral Procurement Technology event on LinkedIn…

Back to regular content next week. This story was just too good…

However, I guarantee you’ll learn something about Procurement Technology by reading. Enjoy.

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ICYMI 👀: Here was my most popular LinkedIn post of the week:
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🔑 Key Takeaways

No time to read the rest? Here are the key takeaways:

1. I casually posted a “call for nominations” of Procurement Technologies for a tournament on LinkedIn without thinking much of it. I thought it could help people learn about “ProcureTech”.
   4 hours later, 64 solutions had been nominated 😳…

2. I quickly had to figure out how to optimally run a tournament on LinkedIn… Pro Tip: LinkedIn is not designed for this.

3. The whole exercise led to a great show. 800,000+ impressions, 12,000+ interactions (likes, comments, etc.) and a lot of fun. If you want to learn about ProcureTech, I summarized the whole thing below.

Read the full 🌙 Sunday Night Note for all the juicy details.

🌙 Sunday Night Note

The morning of Thursday, March 21st, I was perusing news articles and saw the NCAA Division I basketball tournament (March Madness) was starting…

A thought crossed my mind…

In the next 15 minutes, I quickly wrote a post loosely defining the concept and posted it to LinkedIn with a “call for nominations” (notice how the bracket on my picture has a maximum of 16 spots 😅). I stayed around for a few minutes…

Some “regulars” (people that regularly interact with my posts) showed up. They nominated a few solutions and I was happy. A couple ProcureTech nerds would have some fun with a silly tournament over the next few days. I closed LinkedIn and went about my day.

Around noon, I checked back in to see if anyone else had nominated a solution… I was up to 52 solutions nominated…😲 I quickly edited the post to cap things at 64 solutions.

Later that night, after the kids to bed, I got my trusty friend Excel out and started putting the pieces together… How could I possibly run a proper tournament via LinkedIn posts…? I mauled over a few options (polls, comments, etc.) and decided on comments… Why?

• Enable multi-solution/matchup voting

• Be able to run 8 matchups at a time

• Keep the tournament length to a reasonable amount of time (which was still 11 days of posts! 😂)

I seeded the teams based on loose solution categories and submission order. I put together some quick graphics (why are company logo files so hard to find?!) and went to bed. It was late. Foreshadowing: This was going to be a theme.

Round of 64

The next day, I posted the first group for the ‘round of 64’ not knowing what to expect. I wrote out the basic rules and tagged all the companies so that each solution would get at least 1 vote 😂.

• R64, Group 1: 149 votes

• R64, Group 2: 358 votes

• R64, Group 3: 302 votes

• R64, Group 4: 321 votes

• Full Results: 1130 total votes for 64 solutions (17.66 votes per solution)

  • Solutions breaking the 100 vote barrier: Zip

New High Score: Zip @ 104 votes
(clearly enough to win the tournament, right? … RIGHT?)

Amazing! Great engagement. Definitely exceeded my expectations. It was a bit long to count the votes but fun overall Foreshadowing: This would be another theme...

Round of 32

I started feeling like my naivete was getting the better of me so I solicited Jose Bustillo’s help (ProcureTech Cup’s #1 fan). He accepted and joined the “organization committee” right away…

He convinced me to get on LinkedIn Live to discuss the results of the round of 64, setup the round of 32 and formalize the schedule for the rest of the tournament.

We were able to count the votes, create the graphics, release the results and launch the next round in 24 hour cycles. Things were good.

However, at the end of the first day, I checked the comment on my post… 900+ comments 😯

"Wait a second... I have to count all those votes..." (Votes kept coming in at a blistering pace…)

Jose and I counted votes late into the evening to finalize the group 1 round. Idem with group 2…

• R32, Group 1: 599 votes

• R32, Group 2: 430 votes

• Full Results: 1029 total votes for 32 solutions (32.16 votes per solution)

  • Solutions breaking the 100 vote barrier: Zip

New High Score: Zip @ 283 votes
(Wow… More than double the previous high score… I don’t know what I’m talking about.)

Round of 16

When the round of 16 kicked off, it felt like everyone in ProcureTech on Linkedin got a memo about what was going on… And decided to pile on… Especially in the Intake / Orchestration solutions group… *shakes fist*

• R16, group 1: 760 votes

• R16, group 2: 561 votes

• Full Results: 1321 total votes for 16 solutions (82.56 votes per solution)

  • Solutions breaking the 100 vote barrier: Airbase (307), Zip (231) & Fairmarkit (112)

New High Score: Airbase @ 307 votes
(Can we please stop setting new high scores? Please.)

Jose and I got on LinkedIn Live again to review the results of the round of 32 and round of 16 and setup the action for the Elite Eight.

Some clear favorites started to emerge. Some Cinderella stories were also developing (e.g. “one-man-band” Super Negotiate made it through to the Elite Eight).

Round of the ‘Elite Eight’

So far, I had been wrong on all counts with regards to trying to estimate the number of votes for previous rounds… I wasn’t even going to try to guess anymore…

• Elite Eight Full Results: 934 total votes for 8 solutions (116.75 votes per solution)

  • Solutions breaking the 100 vote barrier: Fairmarkit (232), Airbase (194), Coupa (154), Spend HQ (108) & Mercanis (105)

Fairmarkit had the round high score with 232. It seemed as if momentum and engagement were finally starting to wane. Maybe a decent bedtime was in my near future… Airbase posted a 194 score which was good enough to advance but now looked “beatable”.

Round of the ‘Final Four’

As the solutions qualified for the Final Four, I attempted to assemble representatives from each company on a LinkedIn Live call to present their solutions.

I can never get 5 different people on a call on short notice within the same company… Nevermind, 5 different companies… This was a miracle 😂

• Final Four Full Results: 1312 total votes for 4 solutions (328 votes per solution)

  • Solutions breaking the 100 vote barrier: Airbase (501), Fairmarkit (456), Spend HQ (247) & Veridion (108)

New High Score: Airbase @ 501 votes
(Make it stop.)

As Fairmarkit was pitted against Airbase, this meant that Airbase and Spend HQ would face off in the final. Airbase were the clear favorites to take it.

Championship Matchup

As the finals kicked off, I got word that in a fit of passion during earlier rounds Krishna Panicker, VP Product at Airbase, promised to take a pie to the face (🥧) if their company won the ProcureTech Cup…

Very interesting… I tried to secure the same commitment from Pierre Laprée, Chief Product Officer at Spend HQ (😂). No response. Damn…

As Jose and I monitored the votes, I could tell this was going to be the record round for vote total… Both companies went all out trying to win their 6th consecutive matchup of the tournament.

• Championship matchup Results: 1590 total votes for 2 solutions (795 votes per solution)

  • Solutions breaking the 100 vote barrier: Airbase (962) & Spend HQ (628).

New High Score: Airbase @ 962 votes
(Almost double the old high score… The fact that these two companies were able to mobilize 1590 people to vote in a 24 hour period is mind boggling to me…)

Airbase took the win! They are now the reigning champions of the ProcureTech Cup tournament and LinkedIn’s favorite ProcureTech solution in 2024. And Krishna kept his word! A tradition is born?

Jose and I got on LinkedIn Live one last time to announce the winners, discuss some mind blowing stats from the tournament and look forward to 2025.

What a crazy ride… Thanks to newsletter readers who were part of it all!

I’ve already started planning the 2025 edition and frankly can’t wait to kick it off… So many storylines already in the making!

In the meantime, if you’ve read this far, here’s a goodie you can’t get anywhere else:

Thanks again for participating. The “call for nominations” will be a bit more formal next year 😅 You’ll learn about it here first (reading this newsletter).

💭 Quote of the Week

That’s it for today.

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Till next time,

— Joël Collin-Demers

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