The Partner Channel Magazine_Winter 2018
This is the final issue of The Partner Channel Magazine published with Jenny Davis as its editor in chief. Topics evolved around sharing your story throughout life and business. Enjoy!
This is the final issue of The Partner Channel Magazine published with Jenny Davis as its editor in chief. Topics evolved around sharing your story throughout life and business. Enjoy!
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SALES<br />
HOW WILL ARTIFICIAL<br />
INTELLIGENCE (AI) IMPACT<br />
ERP Software?<br />
story by PETER JOECKEL<br />
illustration by SHAWN OLSON<br />
DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH!<br />
T<br />
witter synopsis for the attention span challenged: Like other technologies that ERP software<br />
publishers fall in love with for marketing purposes, “AI” in its truest sense will have no impact<br />
on ERP software because there is no such thing.<br />
Claims of AI-powered software-assisted solutions are starting to pop up more frequently,<br />
and I am starting to see it mentioned in relation to ERP. To be clear, regardless of what<br />
breathless marketers and science fiction fans love to dream about, there is currently no such<br />
thing as artificial intelligence in its truest form.<br />
Sure, there is faster processing of complex problems and machine “learning” that has led to the illusion that<br />
computers and software have achieved AI, but that is not the case.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re are no computers today that are sentient or have “sparks of intuition” or “aha” moments that separate<br />
humans from machines.<br />
However, that will not deter ERP software publishers and their related universe of third-party products and<br />
supporting technologies from making fantastical claims as to how freshly “baked-in AI” will dramatically change<br />
not only the world, but also their products’ value.<br />
To all of them, I would like to call BS.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re is no question that computers can work faster than human beings on solving complex problems, and that<br />
ability becomes greater and greater as computers become more powerful and software more complex, but at its<br />
best, we can approximate or fool people into thinking that they are intelligent.<br />
My main concern is not that there is not a clear understanding of what AI entails, but that it is another rabbit<br />
hole that ERP vendors can run down to create slick marketing campaigns in favor of fixing fundamental issues that<br />
have plagued the ERP industry:<br />
»»<br />
Poor software design<br />
»»<br />
Poorly and undertrained implementation channels<br />
Combine those and other factors, and you fail to fix the fundamental problem of the ERP industry that there are<br />
no successful implementations, if we agree on a basic set of goals for a successful ERP implementation:<br />
»»<br />
On time<br />
»»<br />
On budget<br />
»»<br />
Delivering promised functionality<br />
<strong>The</strong>n there has never been a successful ERP implementation in the history of the market.<br />
34 WINTER <strong>2018</strong> | THEPARTNERCHANNEL.COM
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