The Vendor Prophet

He arrives with a demo. The demo is beautiful. The demo solves exactly the problem you described in the preliminary call, which he attended and took notes during, which felt like attentiveness but was actually targeting.

The demo has a live dashboard. The dashboard is green. There is a number in the top right corner that represents ROI and it is very large and it has a percentage sign after it and no denominator.

He does not ask what decision the system is built to support. He asks who else is in the evaluation. He does not ask what success looks like in your organization. He asks when the procurement cycle closes.

He will be at the conference. He will be on the panel about AI transformation. He will say the word ecosystem fourteen times.

He is not evil. He is incentivized. The church distinguishes between these things but notes that the outcomes are often similar.