Top-Right Today, Missing Tomorrow – The Quiet Collapse of ‘Visionary’ Vendors.
- Sunil Dutt Jha
- May 30
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 26
Every year, analyst firms publish charts that crown a new set of “Leaders” and “Visionaries.” Enterprises rush to align. Procurements are justified. Budgets are approved. Presentations show top-right alignment as a sign of smart decision-making.
And yet, within months or years, some of those same vendors quietly vanish from operations—discarded, sidelined, or replaced.
No accountability. No reflection. No analyst follow-up. Just silence.
A new chart appears. A new vendor takes its place. And the cycle repeats.
The Collapse That No One Talks About
These vendors weren’t niche players. They were spotlighted, celebrated, and recommended globally.
And still:
–Some couldn’t scale across departments
– Others broke critical workflows
– Some were rebuked by governments for failing to deliver basic implementation
– Many were abandoned by the same enterprises that once chose them with pride
Visionary in the quadrant. Vanishing in reality.
This is not an exception. It’s a pattern.
Why It Happens: What the Quadrant Ignores
The analyst quadrant does not reveal:
– Whether the tool aligns with the strategic goals of the department
– If it matches the process rhythms of Sales, Finance, HR, or Engineering
– Whether the system behavior fits the enterprise architecture
– How well its components support other technologies in place
– What implementation friction teams will face
– How it performs under real operations load
Nor does it examine the interdependencies between departments.
A top-rated CRM may cause breakdowns in product roadmap execution.
A visionary HR tool may stall payroll, vendor onboarding, or compliance.
An award-winning platform may fracture Finance workflows due to system mismatch.
But none of this shows up in a quadrant.
Why the Current Process Fails—Even with the Best Intentions
In most enterprises, it’s the internal IT team that collects “requirements” before a new tool is selected. They meet with Sales, HR, Finance, and Ops—and translate those conversations into a feature list.
This list is then sent to vendors, scored against RFP responses, or matched against analyst quadrants.
But here’s the fundamental problem:
A feature list is not a diagnosis.
And asking departments, “What features do you want?” is like asking patients, “What medicine do you think you need?”
Departments describe pain, not structure. They describe symptoms, not systems.
So IT collects: – Requests for faster reports – Better dashboards – More automation – Mobile access – “Better UX”
These are valid needs—but they’re surface-level signals. What’s missing is a Stage 2–7 diagnostic trace behind each request:
What strategic shift are we enabling?
What broken processes are we trying to realign?
What system logic and rules must be preserved?
What interdependent components will this tool affect?
How will this actually be implemented inside existing architecture?
What will this tool do under scale, exception handling, and change pressure?
The IT team isn’t at fault. They’re simply operating without a diagnostic lens. And without that, today’s feature list becomes tomorrow’s enterprise fragmentation.
Collapse Despite Relevance: The British Steel Parallel
British Steel wasn’t irrelevant because steel demand dropped. It was sold for £1 because it failed to adapt to system-level shifts. It died from internal fragmentation, not market decline.
That’s exactly what happens with today’s overhyped vendors.
They’re not replaced because they stopped offering value. They’re replaced because they were never aligned with the enterprise anatomy.
Relevance isn’t measured by analyst rankings. It’s measured by how deeply a tool fits your enterprise’s system of movement, decision-making, and delivery.
How CIOs Accidentally Set the Collapse in Motion
Many CIOs choose tools based on quadrant position, not Enterprise X-ray diagnosis.
They skip the six enterprise perspectives:
Strategy
Process
System
Component
Implementation
Operations
And they don’t evaluate the interdepartmental impact:
– Will this tool improve HR workflows without disrupting Finance?
– Will Sales adoption create new integration work for Engineering?
– Will Ops scalability degrade customer experience?
When these are not analyzed, collapse is only a matter of time.
You Can’t Spot Misalignment in a Quadrant
The quadrant shows product presence, not enterprise fit. It shows market perception, not operational performance. It shows relationships—not your system’s anatomy.
So the enterprise suffers quietly. Sales slows down. Onboarding breaks. Projects get delayed. And the tool—once top-right—is quietly removed.
The Path Forward
It’s not about avoiding vendors. It’s about avoiding blind selection.
Ask:
– Which department-specific workflows does this tool support?
– Has it succeeded within enterprise department interdependency?
– Does it align with our six-layered anatomy?
– What are the interdependencies it will impact?
Because top-right today doesn’t guarantee survival tomorrow.
And no vendor—not even the most visionary—can replace a missing enterprise diagnosis.
That's why ICMG Tool X-Ray™ which is a 6-week diagnostic engagement that maps any shortlisted tool—CRM, ERP, RPA, HRIS, Analytics—against your real enterprise anatomy using our Stage 2–7 Fitment Model.
Before you sign a contract, we trace:
Strategy → Process → System Behavior
Component Fit → Implementation Reality → Operational Impact
We don’t just validate the tool.We X-ray the enterprise—so you know what this system will do inside your body, before it changes it.
It’s not about better vendor comparison. It’s about protecting your margins, your processes, and your enterprise coordination—before irreversible complexity is introduced.
Let’s talk—before your next shortlist becomes your next regret.
