Bundles of Disfunction

Earlier in the day, Mike, the IT buyer, had tried to print out a potential vendor's manual. Mike wanted to check the features lists against the feasibility report he received from a department head. Mike always did this. He always wanted to see if the purchase criteria had been rigged, so that a particular vendor's product would end up getting selected. There wasn't much Mike could do about it. But, he liked to know all the same. Sometimes he would get the criteria changed, so a cheaper version could be purchased instead.

When he tried to print the pdf, he kept getting some obscure message stating that printing pdfs was against policy.

It took Mike the rest of the day to find out who made this policy determination. It was Spath again. Yeah, that no reading at work memo had gone over really big last week. What a nut! Spath made his policy demand last week after requesting some research from the third-level support staff about implementation.

CFO or not, Mike had had enough. So he went down to Spath's office.

"Hello Mike. How can I help you today?"

"Well, Joe, it's about this pdf policy. I can't get my job done with this policy in place. Why? Why the policy?"

"Alright, Mike. As a buyer, it just might help me if you understood what I call bundles of disfunction. We do buy enough of those. Anyway, pdfs are just one member of the bundle of disfunction that vendors provide to us as features as a means of allocating their operating costs to our businesses, their customer's businesses."

"I'm buying their operating costs?"

"Yes. And, as a result our operating costs go up in ways that are transparent to the accounting system, so they don't count against our ROI. This throws off the decision making in regards to purchasing their system vs. someone elses. The pdf printing argument is the same argument that I make about reading on the job, invisible waste, counterintutive for sure. "

"So you are down on pdfs, because we read them?"

"No. It's not the reading issue. I know that people read them at work. I also know that they don't like reading on the screen, so they print them out. And, that's the problem. The cost of printing on a laser printer is really outrageous when you consider that we used to get printed manuals, essentially for free."

"Yeah, I read that somewhere. The cost of lithographic printing is a few cents a page. The cost of a copy around ten cents. The cost of a laser print out something above twelve cents a page. That's an exponential difference. So that's what we are talking about here?"

"Yes, Mike. I think you can see my point."

"Cost wise, yes. But, I actually use pdfs to save us money."

"But, where does that link between reading pdfs and the money you save get documented? How does it show up on the books?"

Mike didn't have an answer.

"So help me out here Mike. How do we get those linkages to show up in the books? And, as a buyer, you are just the person to help us push back against vendor cost allocation."

"I can see that we need to change our cost allocations and capture some other data. We also need to change the ROI formulas to account for these costs. Still knowledge-driven production gains are going to be hard to measure."

"Well, Mike, it should be worth doing. I've talked to Walter and John about these same issues after I sent the reading memo. They are forming a task force. Contact them about getting involved."

Mike wondered if this was going to contribute to a successful career, this task force. But, he took up some other industry best practices during the bust that managed to save his company a ton of money.

"Oh, and Mike, keep looking for more of those costs that come all inclusive in those bundles of disfunction!"

Mike went back to his office wondering about those bundles of disfunction. He was still unhappy about not being able to print out those pdfs. He'd just work from the screen for now. Just then he realized that reading from the screen was one of those policy costs that likewise could be called a bundle of disfunction. They were everywhere.