[McG]

Its easy to point the fingers at the software, or hardware, or support team, or vendor, or team that made the decision. but it doesn't capture the immensity of these things...

when you understand how the rfp process works...it is inevitable that mistakes lead to errors, which lead to... it goes on and on.

the other problem is with requirements gathering. as much as you think that the rfp response helps you out...the problem is that many of these ERP systems are so massive that no one could possibly get all of the requirements down.

so what tends to happen is that some consultant is brought in to help right the rfp...and they speak to a few people in the company. they do the rfp and choose a winner.

detailed and specific business and technical specs have to be created. why? because you need to amend any ERP to match your company. who says that a software engineer in germany or india knows how best to run your company? and then you modify to the specs and then you test back to the specs when you are completed. you make a go/no go decision.

and then phase 2 should start to fix all of the things that you did the first time incorrectly or that are enhancements that you need.

what often happens is that during the JAD (Joint Application Development) sessions, people from the same company cannot agree on what they do and what they need the system to do. the person brought in to customize will often say..."let's just go with what we have for phase 1, and you guys get it sorted out and we will customize for phase 2". everyone agrees because that seems reasonable right? you don't want your tiny part of the company holding up the 9 digit implementation...

so these ERPs get imposed on companies. the tools have nothing to do with how the company was previously run, they are often overly complex, parameterization rich environments that require constant testing and tweaking. oh yah and the training sucks.

but the CFO looks at the bill and says...you know what? i already spent 100 million and the system works...but we can live with it. and there is never a phase 2. never. and you end up with a system that brings companies to their knees...and they have to find ways to work around the system just to get it to work!

did i mention testing? as in regression testing? conversions? anyone? brutal. very complex stuff and oftentimes testing is rushed to try to get things done. so you get buggy software.

its very complex stuff and requires long term commitment to get things to work the way you want...and i mean lots of money commitment.

the reality is that the more you put into these things...the more you get out of them...but many companies cannot wait nor invest that long.

and the kicker? the staff that were trained on the new ERP and are good are often headhunted for far bigger loot than they got in their old jobs...to go to the next ERP project! so not only does the company get a tool that doesn't work...they tend to lose their best employees from the project. accordingly, you outsource.

its crazy stuff.

but the craziest thing that i have ever seen is when a new ERP was deployed at a company from the old system that worked really well. the accounting team switched to excel to do all of their work and only used the multimillion dollar new ERP for data entry after everything had been calculated manually on spreadsheets. you couldn't make it up...but that is how bad it was.