Most delegates, especially if they are in sales or marketing functions, ask about the competitors that cause them the most pain on a day-to-day basis. Some ask about functionality gaps, others about pricing.
This lot were different. They only asked about themselves and how they were seen out there in the market.
The reason for this is that they were going through the first stages of re-platforming and they were wondering how it would affect them when they got their shiny new technology in place.
I explained that although they were all lovely people who always gave up their seats to old people on public transport, they shouldn’t be surprised if advisers who didn’t use them already gave them a wide berth until the whole re-platforming thing was done and bedded in. I may have said that I’d do the same thing if I were an adviser, which for the sake of all your PI premiums you should be thankful I’m not.
Trade secret
This caused some consternation and shaking of heads. ‘But it won’t make any difference while it’s happening!’ said one delegate, and then told The Great Lie.
The Great Lie really is a great lie, and it is one IT directors have to practise for years before they’re allowed to tell it in the real world. I’m going to tell it to you now, and if there’s no column next month it’s because I’ve been assassinated by a team of pasty people with serious Minecraft habits. Here we go.
“Yeah, well, it really doesn’t affect the day to day, right, because the development happens on a different system over here, right, and we test that somewhere else again. Then when it’s all working, right, we run it alongside the existing system, OK, and gradually switch bits of the old one off and the new one on, so it takes over all seamless like. Don’t worry, we do this all the time.”
This is reassuring for people because it sounds plausible, and because it’s much better than the truth, which is that re-platforming is a screaming nightmare. Even if everyone is at the top of their game and never even takes a seat on public transport in case an old or gravid person gets on (look it up) then it’s a screaming nightmare.
