A recent CIO blog post asked “what does a “successful” ERP implementation actually mean”? This puzzled me, because the answer is easy:
One that is never started.
As the author notes, there’s just no way the majority of these bloated projects come in on time, on budget and without one or two people losing their jobs … because all big bang projects do is blow up.
Not that they can’t be successful, they can, and a handful have been, but, in reality, with the complication inherent in today’s business and the complication inherent in today’s systems, they usually aren’t … no matter how well contingencies have been planned for, how reasonable the expectations are, or how good communications are from start to finish. After thirty years, these systems are still so complicated that they are still beyond the comprehension of the average company.
That’s why you should approach your enterprise software needs one step at a time, one core system at a time, and one standard at a time. Define your basic architecture and your basic interoperability model and then select systems that fit into that model. Implement one system to solve one set of problems at a time, insuring one is working before starting on the next, and you’ll greatly reduce the risk of your project being a catastrophic failure.
This isn’t to say that you can’t standardize on one ERP platform … a few companies have found success with mostly end-to-end SAP and mostly end-to-end Oracle, but that if you take the approach, you do it one module at a time. If your integrator says you have to do it all at once, find a new integrator. If your provider says you have to implement the entire system at once, find a new provider. It’s literally as simple as that because, when you get right down to it, it’s your money … let it talk. After all, as Vinnie astutely points out, if you really want to succeed, don’t upgrade, escape.