Aberdeen Adds a Good One: Constantine Limberakis Joins the Analyst Ranks

In the procurement vendor world, many of the best strategy and marketing folks -- not to mention consultants -- have checked the analyst box by working for one of the major Boston houses at one point in their career. Given the turnover at Aberdeen over the years, especially in the procurement market, it's quite likely that if someone tells you they formerly worked as an analyst for a Boston firm, that Aberdeen would be it. Even though the typical tenure of analysts at Aberdeen has been short in the past (measured in quarters, not years), the firm has done a commendable job of attracting good people into the ranks -- many of whom have gone on to bigger things afterwards. Aberdeen's latest hire in this market is a friend and Chicago colleague, Constantine Limberakis. Before joining Aberdeen, Constantine served as one of the founders and partners at Shelby Group, a local Ariba (and later broader) systems implementation and consulting shop focused exclusively on procurement systems and processes.

When he was at Shelby, Constantine was always one of my "go to" guys for real-world stories from the implementation trenches (he was one of many who confirmed the early challenges of Ariba cloud P2P limitations from a systems integration perspective). Given his experience advising clients on systems selection and implementation in the consulting world, I have no doubt his skills will be put to great use at Aberdeen. Moreover, Constantine will do much to break the often false stereotype of industry analysts being unapproachable, standoffish and aloof when it comes to what actually transpires in the field.

Please join me in wishing Constantine luck in his endeavors at Aberdeen. He's from the school of hard knocks and is a no BS type of guy who I think will make Aberdeen's research that much more grounded and pragmatic, hopefully finding a way to help the firm deviate from the entirely scripted quantitative studies which fail to highlight the ability of truly skilled and expert analysts to provide advice based as much on what they know as what they interpret. Moreover, now that Constantine has an expense account not coming out of his own K-1 distributions, I look forward to his extravagant wining and dining of Spend Matters team members (in exchange for industry insight and scoop and business leads, of course...)

Jason Busch