In the ERP era, it was typically 60 months (i.e. 5 years) to project failure.

By then, you were (long) gone (from the role, if not the company) before the project was done. If it failed, you didn’t even know.

In the SaaS era, it was typically 18 months to failure.

In the SaaS era, you were in a different budget position in a different budget cycle and no longer responsible for the project by the time the project was done. If it failed, it wasn’t you. It was the person who replaced you.

In the AI era, it’s 1 month to failure! (And you’re going to fail. Project success rates are 6%, compared to the overall success rates of 12%.)

In the AI era, you make the decision, and before you know it, the system fails and you’re being held accountable because you’re still there, still in the role, and the project team hasn’t changed on either side of the equation.

You f6ck up, everyone knows its you, and only you (because you were in charge end-to-end), and you’re blamed for the loss.

The CFO hates you because you wasted money. The COO hates you because operations are worse than before. The CEO hates you because you made his favourite consultancy/provider partner (whose CEO plays golf with him on the golf course) look bad. And, worst of all, your team hates you as they have yet another system that doesn’t work, that they have to work around, on top of having to clean up the huge pile of sh!t it made when it was implemented. (To be expected. It’s probably just a reskin of the A.S.S.H.O.L.E. anyway.) Because there is no money left to fix it, and won’t be for three years because you overpaid through the nose to get it.

That’s your reality, unless you take extra, extra steps to make sure it doesn’t happen. Steps you don’t know to take because you don’t understand what you need, why you probably don’t need AI, and if you actually do, what (limited) AI you actually need and how to make it work in general, not just in a glorified demo based on buying butt wipes for your elderly care division.

The only way you’re going to know what steps to take is if you understand what you need.

The only way you’re going to understand what you need is to work through the Busch-Lamoureux Exact Purchasing framework category by category and outline what is required for each step of the source-to-pay+ process, then work through the (assisted) software selection process (with an expert advisor) to identify what types of solution you need, and then work through each of those solution types to determine if, and where, AI should be used, what kind of AI, and how to verify it in scripted demos (on data sets and requirements you provide and control) before you select any solution. Without going through all these steps, you’re guessing what you need, being blinded by the hype, and getting diverted to the new hotness when we both know it’s always the old busted hotness that saves the day. ALWAYS!