In 1998, I faced a choice that defines everything about how I work.
Canada’s Department of National Defence had a data problem. Duplicates everywhere. Delivery accuracy at 51%. I could have built a perpetual engagement — cleaning their data cycle after cycle, billing each time.
The Revenue Trap is simple: get paid to treat the symptom while the source of the problem remains intact. The process that creates duplicates stays active. The consultant stays employed. Everyone’s happy — except the organization that never gets better.
Tom Redman called it perfectly this week: “Ignore the question ‘why are we creating so many duplicates in the first place?’ and you will de-dupe forever.”
I asked a different question: “What time of day do your orders come in?”
That question uncovered the behavioral root cause. We fixed the upstream process — governance, ownership, point-of-entry discipline. Delivery accuracy went from 51% to 97.3%. Headcount dropped from 23 to 3 FTEs.
The problem stopped being created.
I sacrificed a recurring revenue stream. But I delivered something more valuable: a solution that didn’t need me anymore.
This is what I call Data Delinquency — when the data is in the system, but you can’t trust it. It’s not a technical failure. It’s a behavioral failure. And technology can’t fix what humans keep breaking.
The equation-based model rewards intervention over prevention. The readiness-first model — what the Hansen Fit Score measures — prioritizes structural integrity over transactional gain.
That’s the choice every consultant, every vendor, every platform faces:
Short-term revenue from the symptom — or long-term value from the cure.
The industry talks about data quality. It rarely talks about the economic incentives that keep data broken.
Maybe it should.
#procurement #datagovernance #AI #ethics #digitaltransformation #leadership
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Procurement Insights
The Revenue Trap: The Ethical Conflict No One Talks About in ProcureTech
Posted on December 4, 2025
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In 1998, I faced a choice that defines everything about how I work.
Canada’s Department of National Defence had a data problem. Duplicates everywhere. Delivery accuracy at 51%. I could have built a perpetual engagement — cleaning their data cycle after cycle, billing each time.
The Revenue Trap is simple: get paid to treat the symptom while the source of the problem remains intact. The process that creates duplicates stays active. The consultant stays employed. Everyone’s happy — except the organization that never gets better.
Tom Redman called it perfectly this week: “Ignore the question ‘why are we creating so many duplicates in the first place?’ and you will de-dupe forever.”
I asked a different question: “What time of day do your orders come in?”
That question uncovered the behavioral root cause. We fixed the upstream process — governance, ownership, point-of-entry discipline. Delivery accuracy went from 51% to 97.3%. Headcount dropped from 23 to 3 FTEs.
The problem stopped being created.
I sacrificed a recurring revenue stream. But I delivered something more valuable: a solution that didn’t need me anymore.
This is what I call Data Delinquency — when the data is in the system, but you can’t trust it. It’s not a technical failure. It’s a behavioral failure. And technology can’t fix what humans keep breaking.
The equation-based model rewards intervention over prevention. The readiness-first model — what the Hansen Fit Score measures — prioritizes structural integrity over transactional gain.
That’s the choice every consultant, every vendor, every platform faces:
Short-term revenue from the symptom — or long-term value from the cure.
The industry talks about data quality. It rarely talks about the economic incentives that keep data broken.
Maybe it should.
#procurement #datagovernance #AI #ethics #digitaltransformation #leadership
-30-
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