Super Tech Waste Bowl

Nearly half of next Sunday’s Super Bowl 50 Host Committee's 18 primary sponsors are tech companies — Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Intuit, SAP, Seagate, Yahoo and Verizon. Lots of corporate parties expected to be hosted by tech companies in the Bay Area this week. Many of the commercials during the game, and in social media before and after will be from tech startups, mobile carriers and auto companies showing off plenty of tech. It is an understatement to say tech will dominate this week for a number of business executives.

To balance out all the marketing they will be exposed to, executives should read sobering feedback about technology and lack of productivity coming out of the recent bigwig WEF event in Davos. BusinessWeek  “Annual productivity growth in the U.S. averaged 1.5 percent from the first quarter of 2008 through the same period in 2014. That’s less than half the 3.5 percent rate during the previous boom, which lasted from 1996 to 2003.” Time : “We all use cool new technologies, and a handful of companies are making out like bandits on them, but we simply don’t see the effects yet on productivity and growth across the board,”

You don’t need to be an economist to see that. You go into a hospital and even though they have spend billions on electronic medical records, you see tons of paper with scribbled hand writing. Try getting much detail on what the hospital allows you to see on line on your own records. Any one trying to get paid by a corporate AP department can see the convoluted processes they follow. Oh, it probably saves them some interest in delayed payments but I am willing to bet the cost of the process inefficiencies way outweighs the savings with interest rates so low. Cloud vendors have delivered some efficiencies but largely in some back office and IT infrastructure areas. They have had little impact on industry specific processes.

So, as an antidote to the marketing you will hear this week, I encourage you to re-read SAP Nation. $ 300 billion a year after relentless year in overpriced hosting, MPLS circuits, outsourcing and countless other charges. Not to mention spectacular IT project write-offs. And even if you are not a SAP customer you can extend the findings to most other corporate IT areas. Then look at how your business processes have stubbornly remained the same in spite of all the IT spend, and you can see why the productivity numbers are so dismal.

And to help with some antacid to offset partying, Amazon will be offering starting this Tuesday, the Kindle copy of SAP Nation at $ 4.99, half off the list price. The promotion will run through the Monday after the Big Game.

Read it and resolve to reduce your IT waste.