Over on the 21st Century Supply Chain, you’ll find a post entitled six lessons learned from six failed software implementations which is quite scary, because it indicates that there was one very important lesson that the organization did not learn.
If you don’t understand the technology, get a 3rd party consultant who is an expert in technology to guide you. (Don’t rely on a vendor!)
One failure is understandable. Every organization will fail in a technology project at one time or another. What’s important is what happens next. If the organiztaion is able to identify what it believes are the (primary) reasons for failure and solutions to those problems, then it is understandable if the organization tries again on its own. (And if it doesn’t, see the above lesson.) If it fails again, then the organization has to admit that it needs help and get the help it needs.
Because if it doesn’t, it’s just going to fail again and again and every other lesson learned is going to be irrelevant because the likelihood of it succeeding in time to get an ROI is slim, approaching none over the long term.