The Technology Questions Most Business Owners Never Think to Ask.

ERP failures are almost never caused by bad software. They're caused by skipped steps, compressed timelines, and decisions made without the right people in the room. Part 2 covers the preliminary work most companies rush through or skip entirely.

Gartner says 70% of ERP implementations fail to meet their objectives, with 25% failing catastrophically. But the damage goes beyond missed deadlines and blown budgets. When an ERP rollout fails, you've got a staff morale problem, a customer relationship problem, and a credibility problem. All at once.

CISA and 15 international intelligence agencies just released a joint advisory about Chinese state actors using compromised routers and IoT devices to route attacks. If your network equipment is old, unpatched, or forgotten, you might already be part of the problem.

The companies that got burned weren't reckless. They were sold something that didn't exist yet, believed it because everyone else seemed to, and are now quietly filling the seats they emptied.

You finished your three-year strategy and locked in next year's budget. Your CIO wasn't in the room. According to Harvard Business Review, you just joined the 67% of companies whose strategies will fail before they ever get traction.

The market is screaming that you need AI. You probably don't.

Switching MSPs without a gap in support isn't luck. It's planning. Here's what most business owners don't know to ask until it's too late.

The fundamentals will catch up to you eventually. Maybe not today. Maybe not this quarter. But they will catch up.

Your technology isn't broken. It's just slowly bleeding you dry.

Microsoft just patched a serious flaw in Active Directory, the system that controls who can access what on your company's network. Have you installed it?

Your IT person isn't lying to you. But they might not be telling you the whole truth. And it's probably not their fault.

In February 2024, a finance executive at engineering firm Arup joined what appeared to be a routine video call. The CFO was there. Several colleagues were on screen. The discussion involved a wire transfer.

A few weeks ago, a hobbyist AI project called ClawdBot went from obscure GitHub repository to 82,000 stars in 72 hours. Social media did the marketing. Hundreds of thousands of people installed it.

The pattern hasn't changed in decades. Somewhere between half and two-thirds of ERP projects don't meet their original budget, timeline, or benefit expectations. Outright abandonments are rarer, maybe 5 to 10%, but the cycle of overpromise and underdeliver keeps repeating.

The current system of unilateral Terms of Service modifications represents market power abuse dressed up as contract law.

If your employees are using ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or any of the dozens of AI tools flooding the market, the answer may be: sitting on servers owned by companies that have no obligation to protect your interests.