When Employees Use Software That IT Hasn’t Approved
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 &quot;cloud&quot; projects are often the result. It seems to also stem from the new C level employee having a close relationship with a sales rep&#x2F;partner&#x2F;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.<p>One somewhat disturbing trend I&#x27;ve seen at some of the largest corporations- cut&#x2F;outsource IT support staff to near egregiously low levels to &quot;save money&quot;. At the same time kick off 7-9 figure ERP&#x2F;consulting projects that at best provide fractional value to the organization.<p>Of course there are counterpoints to this. One of Houston&#x27;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&#x2F;small shops that have industry experience and years of experience in favor of big consulting. Nobody every gets fired for hiring Accenture&#x2F;Deloitte&#x2F;PwC. What usually happens in the non trivial niches is that these big shops sleeve the boutiques through them to get things done...