James Governor wrote a mildly ascerbic piece about how three letter acronyms (TLAs) are misleading. Ever it was so and a topic I first explored in the late ’90s when C&W got itself embroiled in a messy Siebel implementation and which ultimately cost Siebel £7 figures to straighten out.
I’d go a few metres/yards/miles further than James. My selection:
- ERP (enterprise resource planning) – sounds grand but often means accounting + payroll with a modicum of spliced production planning for Big Boys
- CRM (customer relationship management) As James says SFA (sales force automation) but with some call centre and field service capability tossed in. Never had anything to do with customers or the relationships they hold with business
- BPM (business process management) – guffaw – workflow renamed – in most cases
- SCM (supply chain management) Never happened, what they often meant was constraint based demand management and even that didn’t work so well
- HCM (human capital management) Apart from the fact that HR professionals usually find this term offensive, it is only now that companies are demonstrating any clue as to what this might entail and who benefits.
- SOA (service oriented architecture) – more guffaws. The poster child for TLA BS.
Bottom line – treat all TLAs with the sack of salt they deserve. For professionals currently being sucked into the CRM moniker – you’ve been warned!
Judith Hurwitz has a nice take on this.
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