Why it’s just easier to do your job in the Age of AI

Every year articles make the rounds on how to do nothing at work or look busy to either slack off or keep your annoying cow-orkers away so you don’t end up having to do their work too. Now, a few in 2006 really annoyed me and I decided to point out how stupid they all were by selecting one in particular and pointing out just how stupid it was because it was harder and more work to follow the advice then to just do your job for your 35 hours a week you had to work.

But I’m not here to tackle another inane article about how to slack off or avoid responsibility, because hopefully by now you’re not dumb enough not to fall for it, especially since smart managers (and workforce monitoring solutions) aren’t either.

I’m here to tell you why it’s just easier to do your job in the age of AI than to try to use AI to do it for you.

1. You’ll have to tell the AI what you want at least 3 times. Maybe 10. Or More.

Gen-AI LLMs should be called Artificial Idiocy. There’s nothing intelligent about them. They don’t understand anything. It’s all a Grand Illusion. Automated puppet-theatre … and we’re the suckers born every minute for using it.

As a result, they produce a lot of good sounding text that sounds close to what you need, but upon further review, always misses one or more key points of your request … until you repeat it and rephrase it ten times ten different ways and your strive to perfection slowly reduces to anything acceptable whatsoever.

2. You’ll still have to edit the final outputs and execute the work in the tools it can’t drive because they don’t have the APIs for the LLM to execute.

So, after spending hours trying to get it to output the perfect report and process, you have to go edit, finish, and execute that process. Spending as much time as if you just skipped the AI in the first place.

3. You have to deal with the consequences of the errors you miss.

If you’re using a modern Procurement system which is AI-first and allows external AI to drive it, a request to “restock the supply room at the lowest cost” can result in ten times the amount of printer ink, paper, pens, and cleaning solvent you go through in a year because it hit a volume break at the production plant and skipped the intermediate supplier, ignoring the fact that you have to rent a warehouse for the truckloads of cleaning solvent you just ordered for your office building (even though you only use one floor — it assumed you wanted enough for the twenty story office building).

You’ve spent too much, have no room for the inventory, and have to explain to your boss why ordering years worth of office supplies was a good idea.

4. You have to explain the AI bill that was five fold what you planned.

While also explaining that it was your idea, not the AI’s, to screw everything up.

It’s always easier, and less risky, to use your Human Intelligence, and not the AI, to get your job done.

So, You Didn’t Succession Plan — What Do You Do Now?

Back when SI first started talking about talent in year one, we noted that the most important thing you need to do is succession plan — because even if you do everything right, acquire and keep the right talent, and thrive … it will all come to an end when the talent gets lured away, retires, or dies (and it does happen).

You see, if you succession planned, you would have done a number of things that, frankly, you should have started 20 years ago (if you were in business then), or the year you started (if you weren’t).

1. Captured their knowledge from day one

You would have acquired a KMS (Knowledge Management System) and started capturing their knowledge from day one. Even if it’s not directly tied to the systems they use, you’d at least be capturing key knowledge that your junior people don’t have.

2. Captured key artifacts from day one

Furthermore, as time went on, you’d acquire systems for all of their major tasks and ensure that all of the key steps were done online in those systems. No bypasses allowed. Sure, how they made the decisions would be in their head, at least to the extent it’s not captured in the KMS, but all the steps, and artifacts would be there for whomever comes next.

3. Identified at least one internal successor for each critical resource and have that individual mentored by the critical resource ASAP

So that, even if the potential successor isn’t ready for a senior role when the critical resource is no longer available, at least you’ll have retained some of the knowledge, some of the artifacts, and some of the capability. And if you can find a suitable replacement externally quickly, that person will be much more effective as they’ll have a capable right hand resource, artifacts, and knowledge.

But you didn’t do any of this. So what do you do?

Well, first take Wouk’s advice and get it out of your system:

When in danger or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout

Second, identify and acquire a suitable successor as soon as possible, even though it could be costly. You need someone suitable who’s ready, not half ready.

Third, you need to acquire the expertise and systems to jump start the replacement.

  1. Get a KMS ASAP. Don’t make the same mistake again.
  2. Acquire systems that will be used to automate key functions, as well as capture, store, and index all the key artifacts for quick look up that are needed to execute them — no disconnected email, documents on various cloud drives and untracked laptops, or other haphazard solutions.
  3. Hire expert consultants who are former practitioners to help populate that KMS with key knowledge and execution systems with templates and as much process knowledge as those systems can hold.

You’ll still have a rough time sailing choppy seas … but you might not sink if you start on the right track now. No guarantees, but it’s likely your only chance. The Age of AI Hype has proven dumb systems and inexperienced kids can’t do the jobs of senior talent, and since you forced so much of that talent into early retirement with your AI BS, you’re in trouble if you can’t retain a few grey hairs and start training the next generations to take over now.

… so What’s the Real Future for Procurement Tech?

Yesterday we pointed out that SOFIA Killed BOB and Replaced POE with a Black Box Agent, which forces us to ask what’s the real future for Procurement Tech?

As we noted in our last post, twenty (20) years ago the debate was BOB (Best-of-Breed) vs POE (Platform Oriented Enterprise — a [mini] Suite solution).

It was a real debate — best-of-breed modules gave you what you wanted and delivered value, but a slew of disconnected modules is not very productive. (Mini) Suites solved the dis-connectivity problem, but came with their own problems. Given that most were quickly built out on top of one or two core modules, and modules beyond those were barely MVP (that even startups would be shy releasing), you were sometimes lucky to get the 60% to 80% functionality the vendor promised.

SOFIA ((Solution Orchestration Framework Integration Architecture) was supposed to end the debate. Real orchestration solutions that would allow organizations to BYO-BOB (bring-your-own-best-of-breed) for any and all modules they wanted to construct their ProcureTech (and, hopefully, SupplyTech) platforms, but fell short. Part of the reason is that they started as intake to make the big suites usable, and didn’t start building a true, native, orchestration architecture — making it difficult for them to quickly and easily orchestrate the plethora of platforms that customers throw at them. The other part of the problem is that the majority of (classic) SaaS platforms weren’t built to be orchestrated, and, frankly, can’t be.

And using AI-first tools to quickly vibe-code the most common MVP modules customers want that can be “orchestrated out of the box”, doesn’t solve the problem. It just devolves the solution into a classic POE solution (but with less security — one of the big flaws of vibe coding). So SOFIA isn’t solving anything either.

Now, if you ask GAIN, the future is “AI Employees” (which aren’t real). Like any LLM-based solution, they will work great until a Grade A Hallucination results in buying millions of dollars of the wrong product, selecting a sanctioned supplier, or sending money to a dark-web criminal organization. Then it won’t. (At first, it will just order 3,000 pairs of gloves for an automated cafe for a lone worker, because it’s cheaper. LLM-based AI has already done that. Look it up.)

Probabilistic AI (where hallucinations are a core function that CANNOT be trained out) is not the answer and should never be used for more than suggestions.

So what is?

An enterprise SaaS platform rebuilt on a proper intake and orchestration platform (that supports rules-based agentic automation, i.e. [A]RPA) that was originally built to be domain independent and just solve the data and workflow integration challenges. In other words, if Coupa rebuilt on Tonkean (which won’t happen for so many reasons), that could be close to the answer. Zip and Oro were built too quick or too focussed to be the answer. It will be true orchestration platforms you don’t yet know that get acquired by tier-2 suite players with a lot of tech debt that rebuild on those orchestration platforms (that also built native intake) which can seamlessly integrate with next-gen SaaS platforms with secure, full, open APIs that allow for full data push and pull and programmatic function and workflow execution.

In other words, it will be domain specific SOFIAs. Not POE (which is too limited) and not Fake AI Employees.

The question is, who will create theirs first?

SOFIA Killed BOB and Replaced POE with a Black Box Agent …

What’s the real future of Procurement Tech?

Twenty (20) Years Ago, we asked What about BoB? when the debate in ProcureTech between BOB (Best-of-Breed) vs. POE (Platform Oriented Enterprise) was getting drowned out by the emerging suite players.

Did you go out and assemble your own suite of best-of-breed modules to suit your needs, and then pay the consultancy integrators big bucks to integrate them, or simplify your life, settle for a 60% to 80% solution and buy a suite that gave you an all-in-one solution (and bypassed difficult and expensive integration requirements) that was hopefully strongest where your core needs were?

It was a valid hot debate because most suites were centred on one (or two) strong modules that the firm was founded on, with the other modules either hastily built to what the firm considered an MVP so that they could sell a (mini) suite or acquired (and partially integrated) so they could have a suite, even though some of the modules were loosely connected (and sometimes even built on entirely different UX philosophies with noticeably different user interfaces).

Furthermore, twenty years ago, the bigger the suite was, the worse or more disconnected part of the suite was. In the beginning, most vendors started as e-Sourcing or e-Procurement and mini S2C and P2P suites were built up around those modules, respectively. S2P suites were usually built by one mini-suite vendor acquiring another (or, in rare cases, a CLM or SXM vendor realizing they needed both and getting the help of an investment firm). You had frankensuites built from three (3) primary solutions (and, in some cases, fattened up by additional acquisitions over time), which felt as disconnected as they were to use. However, the one-vendor-throat-to-choke and one-implementation-team comforted the C-suite and those purchases were easier than trying to get permission to acquire a bunch of best-of-breed solutions and then write a big cheque to an integration consultancy that you hope can get the solutions to all work together, at least until major solution upgrades, in which case the consultancy will have to come back and upgrade the integration.

Then orchestration came along and SOFIA (Solution Orchestration Framework Integration Architecture) was supposed to settle the debate once and for all. With modern orchestration solutions, you were supposed to be able to bring your own best-of-breeds, integrate them all with modern orchestration, and either use their native intake, or bring your own, to open up their solutions to everyone who needs access. That was the theory. The practical reality is different.

I’m not sure if it’s still the case, but for years, neither you nor your consulting and integration partners could integrate your own solutions with Zip — Zip had to do it internally because it was too complicated and needed to be done a specific way. Oro, first designed to make Ariba usable and then to make other major last-generation suite solutions usable, provided you with a similar situation — partner solutions are pre-integrated and easy to onboard, other solutions took time. Then there’s Tonkean, now part of Coupa, that could integrate anything if they did it and you gave them the time to do it. Time being the key word. (They were essentially assembling an application for you … no quick out-of-the-box configuration!)

None work(ed) out of the box, and there’s two reasons for that.

The first is that you can’t quickly MVP generic orchestration solutions that are flexible, powerful, easy to use and work with today’s SaaS — the Enterprise has to be carefully thought out and designed and the coding talent needed is not the script-kiddie drop out talent that many (AI-first) firms are employing.

The second is that most platforms, frankly, weren’t even built for integration, which means that they definitely weren’t built for orchestration. Modern orchestration requires more than the ability to push some data in, and pull some data out. First of all, it requires the ability to push all data in and pull all data out. Secondly, it requires the ability to programmatically trigger and execute functions and workflows from external sources. Most platforms don’t support that (well). As a result, orchestration platforms don’t work. If the platform doesn’t have, and completely expose, its API (through secure channels to apps with appropriate security credentials), orchestration is not truly possible.

As a result, most of the big orchestration providers are trying to use AI-first tools (and vibe coding, which, as we’ve made clear many times, only produces vibes that are please to the smug sniffing coders who use it, not good code) to quickly code their own S2P apps and modules, and essentially reverting to a POE (2.0) solution — internalizing their orchestration solution as a platform oriented enterprise to build a next-gen classical suite solution. (Oxymoron intended!)

But is that the future? (Hopefully not!)

Remember When The Worst We Had To Worry About Was The Patent Pirates?


Those were the good old days
Those were the good old days
The years go by, but the memory stays
And those were the good old days

Good Old Days, Weird Al Yankovic, 1988

Twenty years ago, echoing the great Dave Stephens of Procurement Central fame, we cried about the software patent pirates plundering away your hard earned revenue as they scooped up patents from failing enterprises (or enterprises not willing to enforce them) for pennies on the filing dollar, and then sued any decently sized company that was offering software that sounded like it was covered by one of the patents in their hold, threatening to bankrupt the company with an expensive lawsuit that would be dragged out endlessly if the threatened company didn’t pay a patent licensing fee for a totally bogus patent claim. It worked well, until they got greedy and went after bigger fish who fought back and made it costly for them to make bogus claims.

When that was the worst corporate theft we had to worry about, in hindsight, it really wasn’t that bad.

Considering that today the Big AI players are stealing all of your copyrighted and corporate data and using it to train their systems in the best case, then using those trained systems to output similar derivative works for their profit in the average case, and allowing shareholders and foreign governments to access it in the worst case, the patent pirates don’t sound so bad — you had to have similar software for them to even consider targeting you!

The posts on your private sites, the published articles in major publications, and the books that took you years to write are being sucked into these LLMs without a penny of royalty to you or your publisher. If you’re an artist, they’re stealing your entire catalog from Youtube, Spotify, etc. to train their music generator app to output music that sounds like you (just with worse lyrics, off tones, and no heart or soul), and if you’re a corporate enterprise — everything on your website, in your emails, and in your private meeting notes for meetings you send your AI assistants to for note-taking purposes. Once they speech-to-text those meetings, all of the output is fed into the LLM training archive for “future improvement” before it is summarized and fed back to you.

Now, if that AI platform is owned by a company based in the USA, it doesn’t matter if the instance you’re using in the EU is hosted in the EU — US law gives them the right to access all your data at any time. And if you’re an American accessing DeepSeek … all that data is passing though Chinese government servers!

So not only are they using your information without your consent and without compensation, since the majority of the big players are in the US, they are using it without any repercussions as the US Federal Government put a 10-year moratorium on AI legislation, basically allowing these companies to steal all your data without consequence for the next decade! Because, even if they say it’s “just for training”, we all know that training data leaks out of LLMs with the right prompts in the right circumstance. There is no safe “just for training” instance, so if the data is your copyright, they’re giving it away for free. And if the data is your trade secret, its a trade secret no more!

And there’s nothing we can do! Our only hope is for every major publishing house and media company that does business in every country outside of the USA and China with copyright and IP protection legislation to launch lawsuits in those countries against these global AI companies that are stealing their IP and copyright and serving it up outside the US. Force them to defend hundreds of suits across the global stage, while lobbying other governments to create stronger protections and mandate consent before using content, and penalties for violating the law equal to at least 10X what the fair market value of the content is. Since the market won’t bankrupt these companies that shouldn’t exist based on the fact they lose more every year than 99.9% of businesses generate in revenue, let the media industry and legal systems do it.