The Enterprise Tech Trap
"This is the enterprise standard for ERP, CRM, CPQ, etc. – if your processes don’t align, then your processes are wrong."
I’ve encountered this kind of thinking far too often in my career. It’s like someone trying to sell you a hammer by claiming it’s the industry’s best tool for gardening. If you don’t clearly understand the purpose of the tool, you might mistake it for an upgraded shovel. But just because something is labeled a “standard” doesn’t make it the right solution. Not long ago, asbestos was a standard for insulation. Radium-226 was the go-to for glowing watch dials. We know how those turned out.
Just because a tool or method is widely used doesn’t mean it’s the most effective for your situation—or even appropriate at all. Following trends without evaluating their relevance can lead you down the wrong path. The only true validation lies in achieving measurable results within your own business context.
Take Generative AI as a current example. Most organizations default to thinking “chatbot” because it’s the most visible use case they’ve encountered. But that narrow view misses broader and more powerful applications—like large-scale analysis of unstructured text, named entity recognition, or data labeling at scale.