How careerism can warp IT procurement

Vendor selection can be skewed by career opportunities

There’s no gentle way to say this. Imagine you work for a large manufacturing company and a decision has been made to replace fragmented, clunky systems with a shiny, brand new application suite. Someone tells you that one of the best options for manufacturing comes from a company called Glovia ­ but you’ve never heard of them.

SAP and Oracle had been the obvious candidates, and as you investigate the market you start to realise that these names would look very good on your résumé. Lots of organisations are looking for experience with these products ­ it could do your career the world of good. What do you do?

By the way, this dilemma presents itself to everyone involved with IT, from the humble programmer up to the chief financial officer. Of course, it might be that your interests and those of your organisation are well served by the same selection, but it often happens that they are not.

As far as many who work with IT are concerned, some of the large suppliers have achieved designer label status ­ they are a “must have” résumé asset. It isn’t by accident that some of the large IT suppliers are also known as the world’s largest executive recruitment agencies ­ you can work that one out for yourself.

So what happens in practice? As you might expect, the designer labels prove to be simply irresistible for some individuals and the selection process becomes weighted.
Other people will simply go and choose the best solution ­ it might be SAP or Oracle, and it might be something else. The inclination of someone involved in this process can be predicted to some extent from the relationship they have with their company. People who are deeply embedded into an organisation tend to just want the best fit.

They are fairly impartial. By deeply embedded I mean they are committed to the success of the business, for whatever reason. People who hop from employer to employer as part of their career progression are clearly more inclined to seek CV-enhancing experience.

This problem doesn’t only manifest when selecting application suites. Technicians have their preferences too. If for some reason it was deemed sensible to use object-oriented Cobol for some of your systems, you might see a mass exodus of programmers. There is a fairly limited market for Cobol programmers these days.
As far as I am aware there are two solutions to this problem. The first option is to choose people for the selection process who would be indifferent to the outcome at a personal level.

They could be external, but only if they are not the people who will implement the technology or provide other services. Their role is simply to understand what the organisation needs and then find the best solution. No doubt this would ruffle some feathers.

A second option is to select people from within your organisation who are deeply committed to its success and have to some extent become part of the furniture. It would also be desirable for these people to represent the parts of the organisation that will be affected the most. You can be fairly certain that they will do a good job. They will not want undue disruption and will be looking for features that make their departments more productive.

The dynamics that drive this conflict of interest are central to the way the IT industry operates. As increasing numbers of people use a particular technology, so it becomes more attractive for others to use it. These are very powerful feedback loops that drive the creation of IT giants.

I should add that privately-held companies of all sizes typically do not experience these problems. The person at the top tends to get involved in a large IT spend and so there’s no hanky panky. They have no interest in résumé assets, but they may own a designer label or two.