<story><title>Mistakes were made: ERP screwups</title><url>https://tedium.co/2020/01/14/sap-enterprise-vendors-mistakes-history/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wayoutthere</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;ve ever heard of an ERP implementation that &lt;i&gt;wasn&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; an absolute clusterfuck. My impression is that while most folks from the integrators know their segment of the product pretty well, they don&amp;#x27;t have deep technical skills in a general sense or know much about other modules of the product. Also that the salespeople know almost nothing about the product and promise that it can do things it cannot. The customer eventually figures this out and ends up ripping out and re-implement tools from other vendors.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a common joke for senior technology leaders at industrial companies to ask eachother &amp;quot;so what was the first ERP implementation you got fired for?&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crispyambulance</author><text>I find it &lt;i&gt;impossible&lt;/i&gt; to believe that an ERP implementation can ever &amp;quot;go smoothly&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;At best, even if the system does what it does perfectly, it&amp;#x27;s still a classic &amp;quot;diffusion of innovation&amp;quot; (1) problem where you have multiple stakeholders with wildly varying levels of acceptance. This is always challenging. As those of you who make a living at this stuff recommend, it&amp;#x27;s better to go 100% with the ERP&amp;#x27;s way and not customize. Well, that can be extremely difficult or impossible in an environment filled with stubborn beancounter&amp;#x2F;battle-axe personalities.&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, however, the people who make the purchasing and sign-off decisions ARE NOT the ones who use the thing. There are going to be problems and those problems will not usually bubble back up to the consultant&amp;#x2F;vendor. People will just have their noses pushed to the grindstone until the job gets done-- never mind the tedium, never mind the countless little mistakes. New people don&amp;#x27;t get trained, they just get put in front of the the thing to hunt and peck through it, sometimes with the assistance of a surly veteran of the system, sometimes with no one to help them. There are thousands upon thousands of people sitting in cubicles right now using Oracle EBS with it&amp;#x27;s horrible grey java applet UI and ridiculous inscrutable query functionality. They&amp;#x27;ve been sitting there suffering it since the 90&amp;#x27;s. Who listens to their screams? Not Oracle, not exec that bought the thing! Or maybe they&amp;#x27;re silent and they&amp;#x27;ve resigned themselves to their fate?&lt;p&gt;(1) &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Diffusion_of_innovations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Diffusion_of_innovations&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Mistakes were made: ERP screwups</title><url>https://tedium.co/2020/01/14/sap-enterprise-vendors-mistakes-history/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wayoutthere</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;ve ever heard of an ERP implementation that &lt;i&gt;wasn&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; an absolute clusterfuck. My impression is that while most folks from the integrators know their segment of the product pretty well, they don&amp;#x27;t have deep technical skills in a general sense or know much about other modules of the product. Also that the salespeople know almost nothing about the product and promise that it can do things it cannot. The customer eventually figures this out and ends up ripping out and re-implement tools from other vendors.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a common joke for senior technology leaders at industrial companies to ask eachother &amp;quot;so what was the first ERP implementation you got fired for?&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jimnotgym</author><text>I have been on one that was pretty flawless. SAP at the time,  with full costing&amp;#x2F; manufacturing, multi-currency, multi- country.  I should write a blog about that,  shouldn&amp;#x27;t I? I only recall two minor faults.</text></comment>