About Forrester
Forrester Research, Inc. is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.

Ted serves CIOs. He has 24 years of experience in the technology industry, focusing on the effects of disruptive technologies on the workforce and workforce productivity. His research focuses on workforce technologies and the programs that support them, including smartphones, tablets, and their impact on productivity; social business and collaboration tools; cloud email and collaboration tools; and the consumerization of IT.
Ted is the co-author of Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business (Harvard Business Review Press, September 2010). Social, mobile, video, and cloud Internet services give consumers and business customers more information power than ever before. To win customer trust and business, companies must empower their employees to directly engage with and solve the problems of empowered customers using these same technologies.
It is through this empowered lens that the consumerization of IT makes sense: employees solving customer and business problems using readily available technology that they master first at home — social, mobile, video, and cloud. This management book helps CIOs and IT organizations engage directly with business managers and employees to build an empowered strategy: understanding which employees are workforce "HEROes" — highly empowered and resourceful operatives — implementing empowering collaboration and innovation programs, creating a new empowered security architecture, and supporting HEROes with the right technology platforms.
In 2009, Ted launched Forrester's Workforce Technology Assessment, the industry's first benchmark survey of workforce technology adoption. This quantitative approach helps professionals and the teams they work with have a fact-based conversation about employees' technology adoption and requirements.
Prior to joining Forrester in April 1997, Ted was a cofounder of Phios, an MIT spinoff. Before that, Ted worked for eight years as CTO and director of engineering for a software company serving the healthcare industry. Early in his career, Ted was a singer and bass player for Crash Davenport, a successful Maryland-based rock-and-roll band.
Ted has a master's degree in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He also holds an M.S. in computer science from the University of Maryland and a B.A. with honors in physics from Swarthmore College.
Sourcing and vendor management (SVM) teams can use this document to standardize understanding of common sourcing and vendor management terms across their organizations. SVM executives may also find...

How can we construct a negotiation framework like this within our organization? What it might look like? And how it would be used in conjunction with a sourcing strategy?

Forrester's sourcing and vendor management (SVM) clients frequently ask, "What are my peers doing?" To help SVM professionals gain insights into their peer group, we tracked all of the inquiries...
Too often at Forrester, sourcing and vendor management (SVM) professionals tell us things like, “oh, we’d never implement a Bring-Your-Own-PC program. It would increase our risk...
The Coming Upheaval In Tech Services
Since the end of 2008 and continuing today, sourcing and vendor management (SVM) professionals have been telling Forrester that they are rationalizing the number of providers they use, renegotiating...
What should be our number of preferred remote sourcing vendors?
Do you have a plan for how your team will add value to your business’ objectives in 2012? I don’t mean serving user requirements or meeting their expectations. I mean helping them achieve...
I like sourcing and vendor management professionals for all of the reasons they drive others crazy. Business and IT executives like to complain that SVM teams care only about getting the lowest...
Sourcing and Vendor Management professionals aren’t known for their high risk tolerance. In fact, most focus a significant portion of their time reducing risks in their supplier base,...
Sourcing and vendor management (SVM) clients tell Forrester that vendor risk is becoming a critical issue. Most firms have intense due diligence processes when hiring providers, but those processes...
Clients frequently tell us how much they value connecting with their peers. A few years ago we created the Forrester Leadership Boards Sourcing & Vendor Management Council to serve that need. But in...
I met a client a while back who told me “I’m just getting back into working with Forrester again. Years ago, like 15 years ago, I used to have these great, animated conversations with an...
A Fact-Based Approach To Workforce Technology Needs Assessment
How well do you know your stakeholders? Business users today expect consumer-like usability and functionality from their work tools. And much of what they want to use can be purchased with a credit...
The vendor management office (VMO) is becoming an increasingly important competency in well-run IT organizations. Forrester tracked all of the inquiries sourcing and vendor management (SVM)...
“Re-creating the way we work.” That’s Michael Chaney’s vision for procurement at Cisco in an era of Empowered users. Next week at Forrester’s Sourcing & Vendor...
Forrester's inquiry analysis shows that sourcing and vendor management (SVM) professionals are thinking more holistically and strategically about their role. Forty-two percent of the 966 inquiries...
Today we found out our great friend and colleague Andrew Parker passed away. It’s difficult to relay such personal news in a public forum, but so many of you know him and worked with...