Balancing between ideal and reality…

Throughout the course of the last few days, I have been through some unpleasant meetings with our process partners. I know I am an idealist, however in this circumstance I feel that I am justified in my concerns relating to the approach that we’re being pressured towards.

We have the opportunity to enter into talks with one of our vendors that could allow us the flexibility to create a general accounting practice to settle up what of our modules are in what accounts, and we are receiving some pushback from them and a general note of “oh, it would be nice to do that but in reality we will have to concede to them” from our process partners. Why should we concede? If we bend on this, we will have to do excessive amounts of rework if/when we ever add another vendor back into the mix. Its better for the enterprise to nip it in the bud now when we have the option, instead of later when it will cost more in time and resources.

I’m also getting a little flack for not raising these concerns in an impromptu meeting that I was drug into with only a scant 30 seconds of prep time. Apparently, my message of “we need to examine what it is they’re selling” didn’t come through as strongly as I would’ve liked and it was assumed by one process partner that we had agreed to play in our vendor’s ballpark. This made me VERY cranky.

Thanks to some support from other key members of the process partner camp and my own team, I am escalating these concerns up a level with our process partners. I want to ensure they understand that they will be making a bad decision, and in doing so will commit them to spending more in the long run and not getting ahead of the curve.

Politics make me mad, especially when they get in the way of doing the right thing. Hopefully I end up winning this battle for the common good, however it will be mostly dependent on what kind of a case I can put together with my team members.