The Three Letter Acronym

CRM, ERP, CMS, BPM - the list goes on and on. All these acronyms represent a potential source of revenue for software and consulting firms, a means for incompetent people within a business to demonstrate their knowledge and expertise by chanting these acronyms like a mantra, and a good excuse for an all expenses paid conference in a nice location. Oh yeah - they are also supposed to add value to your business. Many of these things start deep within the bowels of the Gartner Group which has created a self-perpetuating business and revenue stream out of creating and or promoting concepts like these three letter acronyms in conjunction with the software development firms and consulting companies that pay them, and then convincing people of their importance by charting them in a "magic quadrant".

Let me just say that it is important to manage the relationships you have with your customers, manage the resources in your business or "enterprise", manage the content that you spew out externally as the marketing of your business or spew in internally as the information that helps your business run and manage the processes that drive your business, but anyone who has ever run their own business understands this intrinsically and may not need software or consultants to help them manage this. Let me back up - there is undoubtedly software that can help them manage these basic processes, and possibly people who can lend them valuable advice, but that doesn't mean it should be packaged, labeled and sold as a commodity. Then again - if the conference is in Hawaii, you can bet that I am aboard...