November 2013: Another Rod for Our Own backs

We knew when we launched the awards that if we created something of value, the entry numbers would grow significantly in future editions ─ the first rod we had inadvertently created. The larger entry numbers, however, weren't too much of a problem to deal with ─ they just took more time to process ... a lot more time. If, for example, you consider that the panelists are now required to read in excess of 180, 500-word entries in the space of 10 days, you get an idea of how that workload has expanded over the past seven years.
This year, however, we have encountered an additional challenge-another rod, so to speak-from a quarter none of us expected: The quality of the individual entries has improved to the extent that now any of the submissions making it onto the 26 categories' short lists, stand a realistic chance of pulling off the win. Separating the proverbial wheat from the chaff has become an intellectually arduous task, given that now there is so much wheat and so little chaff.
As I've alluded to on numerous occasions in this column, this is good news for endusers. Buy-side firms have never been better-placed to take advantage of the technology cornucopia on offer to them from the third-party vendor community. Now, unlike five years ago, they have everything they could want: a variety of sophisticated products that cover every conceivable buy-side business process; increasingly flexible payment
options; a variety of tried-and-trusted delivery mechanisms, which dramatically reduce time to market; alliances between vendors offering mix-and-match suites of services, guaranteeing out of-the-box interoperability; and a vendor community only too aware of their competitors' offerings and the levels of service and competition they need to offer in order to survive. From an end-user perspective, what's not to like about that?
And a final note about the BST Awards: Back in 2007, Matthew Crabbe, my managing direcor at the time, warned me of the operational hazards of running annual awards programs. "Be prepared to lose some friends," he said with a smile. Waters now runs four such programs, and yes, I have lost a few friends over the years. But, through these awards, I have gained many more, and that's not something he told me to expect. W