I don't really have an issue with CXXs being ignorant about a subject. No one knows everything. What I do have an issue with is when they act like an expert ignoring all the people who are actually experts in a particular area. It'd be like me going into a room full of IT people and saying EBITDA a bunch of times claiming to be an accounting wizard ready to lead a major initiative. It's frustrating but I've learned all I can really do is smile and watch the show.

It's not like that, it's often exactly that.

I'm extremely fortunate in that while my boss sets the goals he never specifies how they should be achieved.

That means I get to implement them as we need them.

I'll never underestimate the value of smart management :).

>It's not like that, it's often exactly that.

And it usually is sold also from within from know-it-all primadonnas who want to climb the ladder. Or at least put something "spectacular" on their CV.

Get promoted/leave for more money after 18mths.

2 years rolls around, everything is on fire but the guy with the matches is nowhere to be found.

Sounds very very familiar to me.

When our sysadmin left, we migrated all our websites from leased hardware servers to cloud hosting and were able to use that head count to hire a developer instead, who has built great new web apps for staff and customers.

I understand the temptation to be cynical, but these really are useful tools. I say embrace change; it's fun.

Recently, I even told him just to tell me what he wants to achieve because his implementations do not make sense and its my job.

At least my boss also let's me do it my way, still annoying.

That doesn't mean they're wrong.

Actual experts get to the root of what they need, and find ways to solve the requirements, even when they seem impossible.

Mandatory response viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7MIJP90biM

Which, of course, involves talking to actual users.

Perhaps not, but it does make it substantially more difficult to be right.

Why? Because our organization has been quite forward thinking about allowing managers and executives to source the technology they think they to succeed. As this article advocates for, IT was largely consultative rather than dictatorial, and a lot of business units were able to pick what they wanted.

But what this has left us with is dozens of places where customer data was being stored, some of them now past their end of life. No central visibility into customer experience. People getting multiple copies of the same email from different departments using different email platforms. Poor deliverability. Subscriptions on random credit cards that suddenly turn off because the person left and no one knows how to get into the admin account and update the card.

We hired a boutique shop to do the Salesforce implementation; we're not scared of doing that. Unfortunately this time it did not pay off... their performance fell off, to the point that they couldn't even reply to emails on time. As sometimes happens with small firms, they grew too fast and exceeded their ability to operate. We can't wait for them to figure it out... so here we go with a big dog firm. Let's see how that goes.

Maybe I'm lucky in who I work with, but I find the "add a bullet point to the resume" take to be maybe a bit too cynical. Tableau, Salesforce, data lakes, ERP, identity management, and "cloud" infrastructure each seem like useful tools if implemented smartly. (Note that I took out blockchain...)

Who's going to run the thing afterwards? Will the bigdogs deliver something that you can maintain, or is that generally against their own interests?

Finally, who's gonna secure all this customer data? Are they taking that on as part of their remit? They rarely do.

Having been involved in IT management of NFPs, the low price is a significant draw, and the total lack of internal skills is rarely able to counter this.

If you don't have some sort of architecture function, technical risk management, application management, and data management these projects simply won't deliver value.

I'm NOT an expert but my understanding is that, in terms of complexity and cost, there's a whole tier above Salesforce where you're provisioning servers and installing Oracle or SAP. We didn't need and could not afford that.

And if you're thinking of smaller CRMs like Hubspot, Zoho, Sugar, Apptivo, or building one from scratch, well, we already had many of those. :-) Those are what Salesforce is replacing.

Our IT department is superb on metrics like security and availability. But they don't know Salesforce, and are not the right people to evolve the broader culture associated with data. The org hired a leader with experience doing this sort of thing, and he is building out an internal permanent Salesforce team which will own the thing after implementation is done.

Still, as an IT contractor, better you pay the big bucks for the projects. :p

Also, the move to cloud is largely driven by said IT teams failure to deliver much, you could a the CRM on-prem, but we know they'll likely take a few years to fail to deliver it.

Which in turn makes it easier to over analyse and identify user data, exactly what GDPR was meant to avoid.

(While many business people used to how things worked are unhappy with the changes, sometimes you really have to bludgeon a fix through the broken incentive structures that plague businesses.)

GDPR "cares" about identifying user data - how else are you going to protect it and control access to it?

As for over analysing it (whatever that means), it really doesn't care too much about that as long as you have explicit meaningful informed permission from the user to do so, protect it properly, and let them control what happens to it (both during and afterwards).

To provide a prospective as someone who works for a consulting firm like the ones you've mentioned... Hiring the "big" firms versus boutiques is a lot about a perception of risk, maintaining partnerships (procurement with new vendors is a nightmare everywhere), and leveraging experiences across other F500. For big implementations, think any ERP, our consulting teams can number 100+. Overkill? Probably, but there are few boutiques that have those kind of resources. And each of those 100 have more experience doing implementation work across a range of companies. It's a bit of a vicious cycle for boutiques where they will ultimately struggle to be competitive in these types of bids without seriously underpricing their services, which ends up meaning fewer resources or a less comprehensive scope.

As a side note, when projects go south, the company CIO isn't getting fired, but I've know many leaders (from the consulting side) getting let go for botching multi million dollar contracts.

Many ERP implementations fail because of wrong assumptions about the business, or inflexibility of the client to modify their business process to fit the ERP. Enter expensive customizations.

These types of projects also affect peoples' jobs and that can bring up fears of being replaced that can quickly derail morale on a project. Successful projects empower the people with hands on the keyboard who know and live those processes, to own and define their future process too. When the consultants or executives are making future business process decisions without that experience, it is risky.

I see the opposite too, they just staff up on tons of IT people thinking they have a resource shortage, and end up with massive departments that deliver just a little as before.

> It also seems that C level folks are hesitant to hire boutique/small shops that have industry experience and years of experience in favor of big consulting.

The reason this makes sense is because they need to work with companies that have enough resources that they can be really inefficient and have enough capital that they can run for long periods of time and not go under. It’s more of an insurance policy, the quality of the work would be better at the smaller shop of course but they likely couldn’t complete it due to bureaucracy.