Off the Record: High Tech Dreams on a Low-Fi Budget

Let’s talk about the Great GM Tech Lie.

It always starts the same way. The business is tired of "clunky spreadsheets" and "lack of visibility." They want a shiny new platform—a "single source of truth" that handles everything from cost estimates to tax triggers with the click of a button. They sign off on the RFP, we pick a vendor that actually looks promising, and for a fleeting moment, we believe life is about to get easier.

Then, the implementation phase hits.

The Mid-Way Vanishing Act

Suddenly, the "central transformation pot" of money starts looking a bit thin. The CFO decides that the integration fees for our HRIS are "prohibitive." The project manager we were promised is reassigned to a "more urgent" finance overhaul.

The budget for training? Gone. The budget for data cleansing? Evaporated. The custom API we needed for our tax provider? "Let’s put that in Phase 2" (which we all know is corporate speak for "Never").

But here is the kicker: the business still expects the manual work to stop today.

Same Expectations, Less Engine

The expectations haven't moved an inch. Leadership still wants those "real-time dashboards" for the board meeting. The business units still want the assignee portal to look like a Silicon Valley app. And HR still expects us to have slashed our admin time by 50% by next month.

How are we supposed to build a bridge when they take away the steel halfway across the river? We’re left standing on a half-finished pier, being yelled at by someone on the other side wondering why we haven’t crossed over yet.

The "Shadow" Manual Work

What really grinds my gears is that when the tech budget disappears, the workload actually increases. We end up running the old manual processes in parallel with a half-baked new system that doesn't talk to our payroll. We’re essentially doing double the work to mask the fact that the "transformation" was defunded.

We’re told to "be creative" and "find workarounds." In my experience, "workaround" is just a polite word for "GM Manager spends Sunday night manually copying data from one system to another so the Monday morning report doesn't look like a disaster."

A Modest Proposal

If you want the "World Class" tech solution you pitched to the board, you have to actually pay for the last mile of the journey. You can’t buy a Ferrari frame, take away the engine halfway through the build, and then complain that it isn't winning any races.

Until then, I’ll be here, "being agile"—which is currently involves a very large coffee and a very broken Excel macro.

- Anonymous Expat Academy Member