I’m an academic … a transport economist who happened to stumble into supply chain management. Actually … I’m  a civil engineer by training who stumbled into academia, and first and foremost this is an academic blog, dedicated to the dissemination of research on supply chain risk. Little do I know, perhaps, of the real world of supply chain issues, even less perhaps do I know of supply chain consultants and how they trap their clients into buying whole suites of problem solving software packages I didn’t know existed. Maybe I should count myself lucky for not having been fooled by these two ERP executives. They aren’t so lucky themselves, in fact, as they end up in prison for being what they are.

Suitemates – the comedy series Big ERP doesn’t want you to watch!

Suitemates is 6-part comedy video series that premieres today.   Accomplished actors, Kevin Pollak and Ray Wise, play two imprisoned executives of the fictitious ERP vendor, BILK-Moore.  The series represents the growing industry-wide frustrations with ERP supply chain suites, and parodies the tactics big ERP vendors employ to convince customers their products work.

Suitemates is produced by Kinaxis, a Canada-based company that delivers RapidResponse, an award-winning on-demand supply chain management tool. In Suitemates they poke fun at what they call Big ERP and how supply chain consulting companies supposedly work and how they couldn’t care less about their customers’ true needs as long as they make big bucks.

April Fools?

No this is not an April Fools joke, but it is a very clever marketing campaign by Kinaxis. I love fun ads, and really I enjoyed watching the first episode, featuring how the two BILK-Moore chief executives, Hans Ahnnansoahnn and Eli Moore, are meeting their layers after being imprisoned for fraud and unethical business behavior,  and how they without any scruples let the lawyers in on how they came up with the brilliant scheme of upgrades, upgrades and upgrades for fixing errors that were already existing, if not even planned, in the first release of the software. Kinaxis is planning to release one video a week for the next 6 weeks, and I can’t wait for the next episode … watch the first episode of Suitemates.

Watch and win!

To make the whole thing a bit more interesting, there are several elephants subtly placed throughout the scenes of the six videos. If you find them all, you can win an iPad! You have to keep your eyes peeled because these elephants are far more difficult to spot than the obvious one that’s been stomping all over businesses for years, so … watch the first episode of Suitemates. I already found the first elephant.

Links

• 21st Century Supply Chain: ERP-executives deny any wrongdoing
• suitemates.com: Suitemates
• kinaxis.com: Kinaxis

Related

• husdal.com: The Kinaxis Blog