'Heard it through the grapevine'

Background: Customer in Boston undertaking Portal Upgrade, via the migration option. Discussion was whether to migrate MyFavourite objects or not. IT said no need as there was a lot of junk there; my advice was to ask business before they take any such decisions..
Statement from IT Technical lead: "I don't see any value in getting business owners to analyst into this planning phase for they will only raise concerns and delay the whole process. This is my final decision - end of topic.
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Background: Customer in Florida undertaking a BI 'Business Transformation' upgrade from 2.x to 3.x. Meeting for all global BPO's (I represented BI) with the Sr Project Manager clarifying the roadmap.
Statement from Vendor Partner Sr. VP: " You all represent XXXX (us).....for BI group the instructions are extremely clear. [1] Business is not mature to understand what we are going to build; [2] No BI team member is to fix any meeting with business users or owners without first getting approval from John Doe; [3] If you involve business it will only delay our project nad deliverables; [4] You have been given your tasks, just put your nose to the wheel and do the job, if in doubt contact John Doe only.......
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Background: Customer is a global manufacturer with a global BI in Germany. They are implementing their first BI for North America operations.
IT Manager (ITM): The other two vendors said most of our reporting needs will be met by standard content in BW that meets best practices. They even let us speak to a customer each who said great things about their BI. They both said they can start next week and have given firm timelines and budgets for our needs. We need FI, SD and MM reports. We are a manufacturing company.
XX: I am assuming the information they had is identical to what we have. In that case I cannot compete with companies that can provide you a solution without understanding your needs.
ITM: Explain
XX: Have you talked to Germany about Standards
ITM: No
XX: Do you have a copy of your global deployment policies and processes
ITM: No
XX: Have you talked to Germany about this project
ITM: No
XX: I would first advice you co-ordinate with Germany and have your PM go to Germany or Germany come to the US for a week or two to align standards & Processses
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XX: Have you identified what the deliverables for the project are
ITM: The other two vendors both confirmed that what they could deliver was more than we would ever need.
XX: Do you have any complex cross-application reports that are critical to business
ITM:L I can think of two daily reports that take over 10 hours to run
XX: Do you want them to run in under 10 minutes
ITM: That woudl be fantastic
XX: Here is my recommendation. You talk to Germany about our proposal, and the lack of this request from the other two vendors hopefully. Then We align to global standards and discuss all your reporting needs. We then priritize what will come best from your BI and what from your operational systems. Simple as that.

One week later customer signed the contract and 6 months later customer achieved over 92% customer satisfaction. Measures were
1. Met your expectations of reports being delivered
2. Reports met your needs
3. Reports business could use from day 1 as a percentage of total reports delivered.
(p.s. the 10 hour report ran in under 10 minutes)
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