So now that I’ve myth-busted all the trends and predictions, told you yet again that AI won’t save you, told you that all the upbeat “influencers” are just dreaming (and should get back to reality and spend a few more years, or decades, in the trenches), that things aren’t going to rapidly and magically change, and popped all of your bubbles of joy (because they were all fake), what should you do? Should you just crawl back to the dungeon in the Tower of Spend that they’ve locked you in?

No. Just because the hype is all fake, the talent is scarce, the budget isn’t what you hoped, the risks are worsening, and your stress levels are at an all time high, that doesn’t mean all is lost, that all tech is fake, that you can’t find talent, that you can’t do something with the budget, or that you can’t manage the worst of the risks.

It just means that you have to

• look beyond the hype,
• identify talent outside the norms and do more with less,
• realize that not all solutions are overpriced or unaffordable,
• need to identify which supply disruptions will cripple you and which risks are most likely,
• keep calm and carry on,
• roll up your sleeves, and
• be ready to use your Human Intelligence (HI!).

Look Beyond the Hype.

As we’ve told you time and time again.

• AI won’t save you
• Gen-AI won’t help you do anything that is not essentially (large) document (collection) summarization
• You can’t turn it all over to the machine

This doesn’t mean that

• you can’t use tech to do most of the boring, tactical, drudgery that you are doing now,
• you can’t use automation to improve your productivity, or that
• you can’t use AI to improve your decisions and outcomes.

It just means that you can’t expect that these solutions are the magical big read easy button silver bullet solutions to all your problems that the vendors are promising, regardless of what fancy words they use. (Always remember that AI really stands for Artificial Idiocy and you will do so much better in tech selection, especially when Gen-AI is involved, because hallucinations aren’t a feature, they are a function of the underlying model!)

The reality is that if you stop looking for Artificial Intelligence, which doesn’t exist (and definitely don’t fall for AGI), and start looking for Augmented Intelligence, then, if you are willing to look hard, you can find some really good solutions. As we pointed out in our recent article on You Don’t Need Gen-AI to Revolutionize Procurement and Supply Chain Management — Classic Analytics, Optimization, and Machine Learning You have Been Ignoring for Two Decades Will Do Just Fine!, if you pick the right technology for the task, you can get great results.

For instance, just five technologies will eliminate 95% or more of your tactical sourcing, procurement, and supplier monitoring work. In our next instalment, we’ll talk about what they are and how they will change your life!