The Purpose Debt
Settle This Before Your AI Investment · by Ramesh J. Chougule
Three hundred million dollars. Three hundred and thirty-five people maintaining the system around the clock. And almost nothing to show for it on the one measure that matters: business outcome.
When John takes over enterprise technology at Onco Pharmaceuticals, he inherits a system that is operationally perfect and strategically silent. The SLA reports are green. The maintenance shop is humming. The ERP is alive. The business does not know it.
Through a chance encounter with D’Souza, an unconventional senior consultant, John discovers Purpose Debt: the compounding gap between what an ERP investment was designed to deliver and what it actually produces — building interest, quarter after quarter, on a balance sheet no one has written.
With Victoria’s financial model making the argument irrefutable, John assembles a small, unconventional team — the Ninjas — and begins the work of settlement.
It is a business novel and a management argument, for anyone who has sat in a steering committee where ERP was declared a success — then gone back to their desk and opened a spreadsheet.