Posted by Rakesh Shukla on Fri, May 01, 2009 @ 11:34 AM
My boys won the New England Super Regional AAU Tournament this past weekend. Even though it's only a 12-year-old basketball tournament, it's a major accomplishment.
When you consider that we have been practicing together for only a month and soundly defeated several teams who have been playing together for years (including a team that placed 5th at Nationals last year), the significance of this accomplishment is only magnified.
What shocked me more than winning, though, was the dirty play against my boys in the Final Four game ... the trash-talking profanity was non-stop and extremely vulgar ....... chippy guards were kicking my son in the back of the knees and tripping him whenever the referees turned their heads ....and ... you won't believe this one ... another one of my kids was punched in the stomach when the refs were not looking.
This was not basketball. It was violence meant to intimidate my boys. But my boys played through it and showed some real mental & physical toughness.
The other disburbing aspect of winning was the lack of graciousness from my fellow coaches ... many were downright jealous. "How dare a a newly-formed suburban team with an unknown coach win the Division 1 Super Regional Championship???"
In fact, one of the other coaches/teams was so envious, that an informal complaint was filed that I was cheating! He claimed that my kids were too old.
Thank goodness I had all my birth certificates and other paperwork in meticulous order. I had collected and prepared everything in a neatly organized binder weeks ago whereas most other teams were scrambling at the last moment with scraps of paper here and scraps of paper there.
Which brings me to my point about disputes and protests ...
... WHOEVER HAS THE BEST DOCUMENTATION WINS.
Think about what this means for AP disputes. If all information, including all related documents and audit trails is available online, not only will there be fewer disputes but the disputes that do happen will get resolved more quickly.
Some studies have shown that AP can spend up to 20-25% of their time dealing with supplier disputes and inquiries. What a productivity drain! Having all documentation online will solve this problem quickly.
I learned many things this past weekend -- maintaining the best documentation possible to help resolve disputes in your favor was one of the biggest lessons learned.
-Rakesh Shukla