I see this a lot in consulting. When a new CIO (or CEO or other C level) arrives, they want to make their mark with a digital transformation intiative. This usually just means that the new C level employee is coming into a medium to large business and would like to add a bullet point to their resume and get that new shiny object everyone is talking about. Tableau, Salesforce, Data lakes, blockchain, ERP, Identity Management and "cloud" projects are often the result. It seems to also stem from the new C level employee having a close relationship with a sales rep/partner/C level employee at the vendor. Left a project a couple years ago that had Hadoop interfaces from every system. The user count of all this data? exactly 0.
One somewhat disturbing trend I've seen at some of the largest corporations- cut/outsource IT support staff to near egregiously low levels to "save money". At the same time kick off 7-9 figure ERP/consulting projects that at best provide fractional value to the organization.
Of course there are counterpoints to this. One of Houston's major pipeline operators pulled off a digital transformation and actually ended up with well designed, highly integrated and easily maintained systems. It took about 5-7 years and had a few reboots, but it eventually landed. That brings me to my final point. These projects often have a timeline that is divorced from reality. Whatever time frame you think a major IT project will take. Double it. twice, then add 50% and you are close. It also seems that C level folks are hesitant to hire boutique/small shops that have industry experience and years of experience in favor of big consulting. Nobody every gets fired for hiring Accenture/Deloitte/PwC. What usually happens in the non trivial niches is that these big shops sleeve the boutiques through them to get things done...
This resonates so much and seems to be a major trend in non-traditional tech companies. I've mostly worked in the financial industry and the executives' knowledge of technology is almost always horrible. As you said, a couple buzz words and very set opinions on the ways to do things. It's like they get pet projects in their head from reading an article in a magazine and get locked into it.
I don't really have an issue with CXXs being ignorant about a subject. No one knows everything. What I do have an issue with is when they act like an expert ignoring all the people who are actually experts in a particular area. It'd be like me going into a room full of IT people and saying EBITDA a bunch of times claiming to be an accounting wizard ready to lead a major initiative. It's frustrating but I've learned all I can really do is smile and watch the show.
>> It's like they get pet projects in their head from reading an article in a magazine and get locked into it.
>It's not like that, it's often exactly that.
And it usually is sold also from within from know-it-all primadonnas who want to climb the ladder. Or at least put something "spectacular" on their CV.
When reading these stories, part of me wants to give up and switch to the dark side. Instead of worrying about whether what we're doing is even useful for anyone, I could be earning money and prestige by leading large companies to deploy random SaaS solutions. What's not to like? I mean, except making your organization waste couple billion dollars and hundreds of man-years?
Or they just think “Tableau, Salesforce, data lakes, ERP, identity management, and "cloud" infrastructure each seem like useful tools if implemented smartly.”
Cute. We actually built a data lake (with Python and MySQL) and immediately found problems we weren't even aware of, like (as I mentioned above) people getting the same email multiple times in the same day.
When our sysadmin left, we migrated all our websites from leased hardware servers to cloud hosting and were able to use that head count to hire a developer instead, who has built great new web apps for staff and customers.
I understand the temptation to be cynical, but these really are useful tools. I say embrace change; it's fun.
I feel like Harvard Business Review articles are a form of keyword stuffing. Combinations of buzzwords when googled bring up a bunch of big consultancy websites.
I work with a guy, that can't code, is a DBA but I have to fix his queries but when it comes to new projects, he has all the answers on how to implement everything and has not written a single line of code in an application.
Recently, I even told him just to tell me what he wants to achieve because his implementations do not make sense and its my job.
At least my boss also let's me do it my way, still annoying.
We've got a Salesforce implementation going at the nonprofit where I work. While there was some debate about which big CRM we'd buy, the need to consolidate was blindingly obvious.
Why? Because our organization has been quite forward thinking about allowing managers and executives to source the technology they think they to succeed. As this article advocates for, IT was largely consultative rather than dictatorial, and a lot of business units were able to pick what they wanted.
But what this has left us with is dozens of places where customer data was being stored, some of them now past their end of life. No central visibility into customer experience. People getting multiple copies of the same email from different departments using different email platforms. Poor deliverability. Subscriptions on random credit cards that suddenly turn off because the person left and no one knows how to get into the admin account and update the card.
We hired a boutique shop to do the Salesforce implementation; we're not scared of doing that. Unfortunately this time it did not pay off... their performance fell off, to the point that they couldn't even reply to emails on time. As sometimes happens with small firms, they grew too fast and exceeded their ability to operate. We can't wait for them to figure it out... so here we go with a big dog firm. Let's see how that goes.
Maybe I'm lucky in who I work with, but I find the "add a bullet point to the resume" take to be maybe a bit too cynical. Tableau, Salesforce, data lakes, ERP, identity management, and "cloud" infrastructure each seem like useful tools if implemented smartly. (Note that I took out blockchain...)
Your problem statement does make it sound like you need a CRM, but I do wonder why is has to be a big CRM with a big consultancy, and why IT aren't delivering it?
Who's going to run the thing afterwards? Will the bigdogs deliver something that you can maintain, or is that generally against their own interests?
Finally, who's gonna secure all this customer data? Are they taking that on as part of their remit? They rarely do.
I expect the significant discounts offered to NFPs has some bearing on this decision.
Having been involved in IT management of NFPs, the low price is a significant draw, and the total lack of internal skills is rarely able to counter this.
If you don't have some sort of architecture function, technical risk management, application management, and data management these projects simply won't deliver value.
The CRM needed to be sophisticated enough to accommodate high standards for data security and access control, several marketing integrations, and the complex data model that resulted from a permissive culture.
I'm NOT an expert but my understanding is that, in terms of complexity and cost, there's a whole tier above Salesforce where you're provisioning servers and installing Oracle or SAP. We didn't need and could not afford that.
And if you're thinking of smaller CRMs like Hubspot, Zoho, Sugar, Apptivo, or building one from scratch, well, we already had many of those. :-) Those are what Salesforce is replacing.
Our IT department is superb on metrics like security and availability. But they don't know Salesforce, and are not the right people to evolve the broader culture associated with data. The org hired a leader with experience doing this sort of thing, and he is building out an internal permanent Salesforce team which will own the thing after implementation is done.
I mean fair enough and I'm sure they are reasons, but from a very immature point of view it sounds like you could have just picked a winner from your current CRMs and consolidated, and had a system in place that arguably already works, lowering your risk.
Still, as an IT contractor, better you pay the big bucks for the projects. :p
An IT culture that's built their budget and staff around managing a datacenter with on-premise software lacks incentive to support cloud implementations.
Whilst true, the on-prem based implementations are usually insecure and manual as fuck, which largely means the IT function simply stopped learning.
Also, the move to cloud is largely driven by said IT teams failure to deliver much, you could a the CRM on-prem, but we know they'll likely take a few years to fail to deliver it.
One of the side-effects I'm seeing of GDPR is a stronger incentive to consolidate systems under central management. Companies that allowed different departments the leeway to control their own systems now find themselves literally not knowing how many different places a customer's data might live.
That was absolutely a factor in this decision. And it's not just GDPR, many states and even the federal government are likely to impose more regulation on how personal data is collected and stored.
Not necessarily. Another way of looking at it is that GDPR is forcing companies to eliminate a common dysfunction, while at the same time restricting their ability to play shenanigans with user data. The end result is companies that are more efficient at what they should be doing, and restricted from doing what they shouldn't be doing. A win-win.
(While many business people used to how things worked are unhappy with the changes, sometimes you really have to bludgeon a fix through the broken incentive structures that plague businesses.)
> Which in turn makes it easier to over analyse and identify user data, exactly what GDPR was meant to avoid.
GDPR "cares" about identifying user data - how else are you going to protect it and control access to it?
As for over analysing it (whatever that means), it really doesn't care too much about that as long as you have explicit meaningful informed permission from the user to do so, protect it properly, and let them control what happens to it (both during and afterwards).
> Nobody every gets fired for hiring Accenture/Deloitte/PwC. What usually happens in the non trivial niches is that these big shops sleeve the boutiques through them to get things done...
To provide a prospective as someone who works for a consulting firm like the ones you've mentioned... Hiring the "big" firms versus boutiques is a lot about a perception of risk, maintaining partnerships (procurement with new vendors is a nightmare everywhere), and leveraging experiences across other F500. For big implementations, think any ERP, our consulting teams can number 100+. Overkill? Probably, but there are few boutiques that have those kind of resources. And each of those 100 have more experience doing implementation work across a range of companies. It's a bit of a vicious cycle for boutiques where they will ultimately struggle to be competitive in these types of bids without seriously underpricing their services, which ends up meaning fewer resources or a less comprehensive scope.
As a side note, when projects go south, the company CIO isn't getting fired, but I've know many leaders (from the consulting side) getting let go for botching multi million dollar contracts.
Agreed. There is a perceived risk with the F500 so they may spend more to do something than is required because they feel they have recourse with the big shops. There are some good teams of folks out there, but there are also some shops that are happy to send a dozen folks @250-300/hr that generate process maps in visio and power point slides instead of delivering/implementing a project. I have seen these big shops deliver in a timely manner and I have seen boondoggles that waste millions. I don't think they are by default "bad", I just think they are not necessarily the right choice in some circumstances, and the right option is to hire the boutique niche firm that specializes in what they need. This lack of awareness is exactly what the article brings to light. CIO shoots down VP who needs timely solution for long protracted big rock implementation.
There's a strong case for decoupling the process flows, requirements, business analysis, scoping, current state understanding; from the implementation. Maybe even having a separate consulting firm do that work up front before going to bid on the ERP.
Many ERP implementations fail because of wrong assumptions about the business, or inflexibility of the client to modify their business process to fit the ERP. Enter expensive customizations.
These types of projects also affect peoples' jobs and that can bring up fears of being replaced that can quickly derail morale on a project. Successful projects empower the people with hands on the keyboard who know and live those processes, to own and define their future process too. When the consultants or executives are making future business process decisions without that experience, it is risky.
Sure, they get fired but are hired somewhere else because of the contracts they made botching a multi-million dollar contract. There isn't much of a downside to them for over-promising and under-delivering.
My experience with working with those consulting firms is that you start with 2 of them and at the end of the year you end up with 6 while still wondering why and having the test team somewhere offshore not doing what they promised so you end up doing it yourself as boutique firm
> One somewhat disturbing trend I've seen at some of the largest corporations- cut/outsource IT support staff to near egregiously low levels to "save money".
I see the opposite too, they just staff up on tons of IT people thinking they have a resource shortage, and end up with massive departments that deliver just a little as before.
> It also seems that C level folks are hesitant to hire boutique/small shops that have industry experience and years of experience in favor of big consulting.
The reason this makes sense is because they need to work with companies that have enough resources that they can be really inefficient and have enough capital that they can run for long periods of time and not go under. It’s more of an insurance policy, the quality of the work would be better at the smaller shop of course but they likely couldn’t complete it due to bureaucracy.
I'm convinced that the majority of Salesforce implementations are done so that C level execs aren't the odd one out that isn't using Salesforce during their next round of golf.
Digital transformations can be great. The problem is, anything great will be sold to you by consultancies as a way to give you more consultancy services, which is kind of the opposite of what a digital transformation should be.
One somewhat disturbing trend I've seen at some of the largest corporations- cut/outsource IT support staff to near egregiously low levels to "save money". At the same time kick off 7-9 figure ERP/consulting projects that at best provide fractional value to the organization.
Of course there are counterpoints to this. One of Houston's major pipeline operators pulled off a digital transformation and actually ended up with well designed, highly integrated and easily maintained systems. It took about 5-7 years and had a few reboots, but it eventually landed. That brings me to my final point. These projects often have a timeline that is divorced from reality. Whatever time frame you think a major IT project will take. Double it. twice, then add 50% and you are close. It also seems that C level folks are hesitant to hire boutique/small shops that have industry experience and years of experience in favor of big consulting. Nobody every gets fired for hiring Accenture/Deloitte/PwC. What usually happens in the non trivial niches is that these big shops sleeve the boutiques through them to get things done...