State budget plan passed.—Tweet from Michelle Daily

Greg Kussa, County CEO, read the tweet, then dropped his phone on the desk. It skid and knocked over the photo of him with a smiling governor. He did not set the picture frame right again.

Greg pressed the intercom button. “Elizabeth.”

“Yes,” came the response through the intercom with a faint echo from outside his office.

“Call a meeting for 10:30, will you? All the managers. It’s mandatory.”

He hung up, and Elizabeth set about making the phone rounds.

An hour later, the conference room was stocked with water pitchers, muffins, and Starbucks coffee. Those who were early worried. They, too, had heard about the state budget plan passing, and Starbucks was only reserved for celebrations and bad, very bad, emergency meetings. This was not a celebration.

“So I’m sure you’ve all heard the news,” Greg started, his hands on his hips as he stood at the head of the conference table.

Everyone nodded. Even Lloyd, the CIO, nodded, though he hadn’t heard the news until James, his IT Director, had told him in passing. Lloyd had been googling tourist attractions in Rome all morning. He was retiring.

“Twenty percent cutbacks,” Greg said. “Maybe more.”

There was a low murmur from the managers and the sound of creaking chairs.

“I know”—Greg shook his head—“budget choices are going to be complex.”

Greg talked about cutting operational costs, maintenance, and possible furloughs. All the muffins were gone, and nobody was without a frown or a cramp in their hand when he finished. The good possibility of layoffs loomed in everyone’s mind.

James had listened patiently all meeting, but finally he couldn’t help himself. “I’m still a little unclear as to what you are asking us to do when we get back to our desks.”

Greg looked up from his notes, his eyebrows furrowed. “Cut costs any way you can. Balance the budget.”

“But the problem with that,” James continued, “is that we need better tools to do so.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” Greg said, “but we are not in the position to spend the money, or the time, trying out a new software system. Maybe next year.”

“But data warehousing is the perfect place for IT to cut the fat. In the nine years that I’ve been here, data warehousing has never kept its promise. It’s just a sunk cost.”

The rest of the managers picked at their muffin crumbs and sipped their cold coffee silently. Greg looked to Lloyd for help, but Lloyd did not want to agree with James in front of others, so he just shrugged.

“All right,” Greg said. “If you give Elizabeth a ring, I’m sure she can fit you into my schedule this week. But Lloyd, I want you there, too.”

James sat back in his chair, and nodded. “Looking forward to it.”

When the meeting finally broke for lunch, James sat down at his desk with a turkey sandwich and a Coke. He checked his blogs and came across yet another reference to the problem:

ERP Challenge: “Simpler Systems takes the cake with their search engine for data [...] web based search platform [...] ERP models are made accessible.”

Then James picked up the phone, called Elizabeth and scheduled a meeting with Greg.