July 13th, 2009
Your implementation is killing us
When I think about the enterprise apps landscape, it seems almost impossible to get away from MISO’s addiction to multi-million dollar implementations. Those days are gone and yet financial analysts seem obsessed with the notion that somehow, some day they will return.
Oracle continues to wow the Wall Street faithful, even though I believe they’re watching a company that will find it increasingly hard to justify premium pricing. Probably around Q2 of Oracle’s reporting year. SAP is due to report its Q2 earnings on 29th July with many expecting a fall in new software licenses to be in the order of 40%. Microsoft has taken 7 plus years to turn the Navision/GreatPlains/Damgaard franchise from $500 mill to around $1 billion in revenues. If that was a publicly traded unit then such growth would be regarded as an investment failure. IBM continues to try find ways of feeding its consulting division at premium prices, most recently by re-inventing Lotus and slapping on a social computing layer but also through its own SAP implementations.
In the meantime and after thousands of implementations across the MISO ecosphere we still hear of failures that keep Mike Krigsman busy. The argument I often hear is that every implementation is different and therefore you can’t cookie cutter. C’mon - who are you trying to kid here? Most ERP implementations focus on financials. Are you seriously trying to kid me that there is something magical about putting debits on the left and credits on the right when the original system was invented in the 15th century? Yes, that’s simplistic I know but I cannot believe for one second there is anything intrinsically differentiating in how the books are kept. Even if we give the vendors the benefit of the doubt, then why are we still seeing massive over-runs?
Most recently, I discovered one poor soul who has been documenting the trials and tribulations of making a SAP implementation work. His whole blog should be required reading, typifying many of the problems independent consultants and observers see but which rarely hit the headlines. Perhaps most tragically:
A few weeks ago, it was my birthday - the kids put together a special treat for me and we planned a meal at a local restaurant. Of course, I was late home, just time to hit the shower and change, then off out with wet hair. I have to be honest, I didn’t feel like celebrating, and we cut the evening a bit short. When we got home, I sat down and fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning, I was still there; and my wife had got a blanket and was there with me. I can’t get over how lucky I am to be married to her - either I did something really good in a previous life, or this is a case of “pay it forward”.
My wife felt that I needed to see the family physician again. He confirmed that my blood pressure is still climbing, although the cholesterol is OK (just). He wants me to take a vacation and I can’t disagree with him; we are looking at taking a break later in the year. I don’t care where it is - just somewhere that I can relax and forget about all this crap.
Is this what our projects are leading towards? People getting ill and so tired they will go anywhere to get a break? That cannot be right.
Dennis Howlett has been providing comment and analysis on enterprise software since 1991. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 07/13/09
