Why I put the kibosh on the survey of list-makers

Apologies to several of you who voted on a poll I ran on Sunday/Monday that was evaluating the credibility of the list-makers and award-givers in the outsourcing industry. Unfortunately, I received a very large number of suspicious survey responses from a host of "FORTUNE 500 buyers", whose IP addresses - for some reason - all seemed to emanate from the same couple of locations. I received a very large number of these survey submissions clustered within a short time-frame, and they had no names or email addresses attached. They also all had selected one particular list-maker as "highly credible", while simultaneously describing the same 2 others as having "poor credibility".

It saddens me that on-line surveys can seemingly be so easily manipulated by entities that seek to sabotage results, or skew them in favor of themselves. I have become a little more cynical (than usual) this week as a result. As an industry analyst, I try hard to be impartial and deliver information to clients to help them make informed, unbiased decisions. I run this blog to drive healthy discussion, promote ideas and share knowledge with others. It seems that not everyone shares my ideals.

There's my rant. Issue closed. Thanks for listening. I just hope that there are still many of us who want to drive out bias and impropriety from a challenging industry in these complex times.

Comments

[Phil Fersht]

Hi Ishana,

I appreciate your comment. I (and many, many others in the industry) hope the entity responsible for flooding the internet with its paranoid spoiling tactics will try new avenues in the future to develop a credible market position,

Phil.

[Ishani Mitra]

There really are a lot of them doing the rounds even today.Feel really bad to have heard that.