Vision - Do you have it?

Working mostly in the Business Planning and Consolidation space, I also have a long history as well in the SAP ECC business process space.

There seemed once this dream in the SAP world that someone could become a Subject Matter Expert. It seems that at some point that individual would not be exclusively talking to throngs of IT managers about SOA, SOAP, COM and Corba but might actually talk to business leaders about Net Trade Cycles and working capital management.

It seems SAP wanted this back in the late 90's and early 2000s and pretends to it today, but something went wrong. Business leadership water cooler talk is all about outsourcing and low cost IT labor. If that is what everyone else is doing then you must do it too.

Seldom would a renegade measure the cycle time of low cost resource delivery and never would an IT initiative be measured against the working capital it can save. Yes sadly whether we like it or not SAP is becoming techno babble water cooler talk.

IT departments and low cost resources see this.

All along while in the trenches the Subject Matter Expert sees that the organization is struggling with too many people, too many systems, too much thinking about too many technical ideas and no thinking about what is really needed in a business. Where is the software sales company that will only sell you what will really bring you value?

It seems too that the business is not really interested in seeing new things anymore. They are happy with a lot of people barely able to communicate in real terms that know nothing of the business, but solve help desk tickets as if they were issues with code and wires. Unfortunately it appears that no one is asking anymore if the problem needs to be solved or if the process is totally without merit.

Vision - Seeing something others do not.

Be a Cowboy!