You need modern tech more than ever, but with unemployment on the rise (and people buying less), recessionary fears, tariff wars, etc., the C-Suite doesn’t want to give you the increased budget you need to buy the tech you desperately need to be more productive.
On the flip-side, they are finding millions of dollars for “AI” (in the hopes the lies are true and they can replace you, even though any attempts to do so will result in massive negative repercussions) despite the fact you’re not ready for AI and most AI-first vendor solutions SUCK, and trying to bring in in big consultancies (who will propose multi-year big-bang projects that, like all big bang projects that came before, will result in big busts and possibly create some of the biggest supply chain disasters of all time). You know the tech doesn’t work. You saw the 6% success rate from the recent McKinsey study and the 5% from the recent MIT study (both in late 2025). That’s a 94% failure rate, which is even worse than the general tech failure rate of 88% (as per a Bain 2024 study)!
You know you need modern tech, and you know, for the vast majority of those needs, AI ain’t it. Especially since you know that there is no such thing as Artificial Intelligence. (Artificial Idiocy for sure — it’s called Gen-AI — but not Artificial Intelligence. The best you can get is Augmented Intelligence, but that’s always narrowly focussed and quite rare due to too much research, and promotion, of Gen-AI LLMs that will never work [as the models are foundationaly flawed and there is no more data to train them on].)
So what you do?
Frankly, you lie and say its AI!
The fact of the matter is, if the C-Suite is insisting on AI, it’s because they don’t actually know what AI is. (This should be abundantly clear by the fact we have a lot of vendors, and consultancies, claiming AI Employees, and we all know that’s pure bullcr@p!) And the reason they are insisting on it is because everyone else is lying to their face. The Big (and small) “AI” Tech Vendors. (Big) Analyst firms. Big Consultancies. The Media publishing the fake claims and fake stories (and presenting what are bullcr@p-filled advertorials as vetted and verified case studies). Influencers spreading the hype for their own profit.
And since this C-Suite has a lower TQ (Technological Quotient) than an average elementary school child (who can probably use your phone and tablet better than you can), it’s not like they have any real clue what AI is.
And if the C-Suite wants “proof” that the vendor you select has AI, ask the C-Suite what that means to them. Nine times out of ten it is a chatbot interface. If the vendor you select hasn’t done so already, just have them hook in Chat-GPT through an API, let the execs play for 5 minutes, get the C-Suite approval, and then have the vendor disable the interface before delivery (in platforms where it truly is useless, or limit the chatbot interface to help queries where there is very little downside to it screwing up).
When Chat-GPT first became the rage in Procurement, C-Suites insisted on “AI Guided Buying” even though, with a well designed federated catalog (that support standard service forms) — that supported contracts, preferred vendors, (learned) business rules, and budgets — it was five to ten times faster to use the integrated search bar and filters (as per our twelfth entry of our 2025 Myth-busting series where we illustrated just how dumb the Gormless AI could be). After losing out on a few deals due to this lack of functionality (even though they were the buyer’s choice), a fed-up vendor built a chat-bot led guided buying offering on standard LLM libraries. They can turn it on, demo it for the pointy-haired bosses, and turn it off again.
This is critical when the real value of
- analytics is exploration
- sourcing is optimization (not error-prone calculations by an LLM that might erroneously multiply a number by -1 because it’s interpretation of the request is to satisfy an arbitrary savings number anyway it can)
- supplier management is potential issue detection and human review and remediation
- procurement is honouring contracts, using vetted suppliers, and following rules designed to prevent risk
- etc.
So take advantage of the fact that they don’t have a clue what (real) AI is and tell them whatever tech you need to solve your problem, regardless of how much AI it does, or doesn’t, have is the latest and greatest AI if that’s what it takes to get the tech you need to solve your problem.
I know you don’t want to lie, but the reality is that is now what you have to do to keep your job, because if you don’t get the tech you need, you’ll fail and be made redundant. And since everyone else is lying too, chances are someone is already saying the tech is AI and you can just point to them (and blame them for the lie).
End of the day, it’s whatever makes you the most productive. That might be a new AI solution, might be a classic ML or NN solution, or it might be two-decades old rule-based automation where you can encode a few rules and have the solution do 95% of your work on auto-pilot without any worry of it ever screwing up (and costing someone their job).
Remember, you’re hired to get things done, not listen to bullsh!t that comes straight from the A.S.S.H.O.L.E.. Don’t get blinded by the hype!