News & views

Epicor sued over alleged ERP project failure

August 11, 2011 from Computerworld – “Epicor is being sued by one of its customers over an ERP (enterprise resource planning) project that allegedly racked up five times its expected implementation costs, in the latest dispute of this type to become public… The implementation costs were supposed to be US$190,000 but have reached more than $1 million, the complaint says. Whaley is suing Epicor for fraud, breach of contract, unfair trade and negligent misrepresentation. It wants its money returned along with additional money for damages…” 180 View – Unfortunately there are still failed ERP implementations. We believe that the problem […]

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IT projects are ticking time bombs

August 21, 2011 from the Toronto Star – “Ambitious IT projects are ticking time bombs that can bring down corporations if they’re not carefully managed to come in on time and on budget, warns a study in the Harvard Business Review. The Oxford University researchers examined 1,471 information technology projects, in private and public sectors, comparing budgets and estimated performance benefits with actual costs and results. They had expected to find IT projects incur large average cost overruns, but they were surprised to see fully one in six projects — nearly 17 per cent — were so mismanaged that they […]

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Cloud-Based ERP May Be Approaching the Tipping Point

May 17, 2012 from SupplyChainBrain – “I spent some time last week at NetSuite’s first user conference in San Francisco. I’ve known NetSuite for much of its history, but I wanted the opportunity to mingle with hundreds of companies that have adopted ERP in the cloud. My immediate impression was that the enthusiasm level among customers and prospects was uncharacteristic of the rather staid enterprise application world. It isn’t easy to find people who are excited about their ERP systems, but this group certainly was…” 180 View – The article is partly based on a NetSuite user conference and discussion […]

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Don’t Bother Building Consensus

June  2011 from Project Times – “There is a problem with building consensus.  First of which is it may never happen.  I often hear people referring to consensus as trying to get everyone to agree on a decision.  A common definition of consensus is “An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole”. Here are negative scenarios that can result with consensus building as defined: A decision never gets made or is delayed – By trying to get everyone to agree, stubbornness can kick in and individuals can stall or stop decisions from being made. A weaker solution […]

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Common Estimating Mistakes

May 16, 2011 from gannthead.com – “Here are some common estimating issues that can often negatively impact your project… Padding… Being overly optimistic… Bad requirements… Omission… Different levels… Being put on the spot… Forgetting the risk factor… Pressure from above… Failure to involve the “do-ers”…” 180 View – Estimating is tough and we ask for it all the time from the vendors when assisting our clients in a system selection project. The vendors don’t have enough information when responding to an RFP so they rely on past experience based on similar sized projects and what they think the market will […]

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Avoiding project death by ROI

February 6, 2011 from The Enterprise System Spectator – “…My hypothesis is that, due to a reluctance to say “no” directly, ROI calculations are often a convenient way to refuse projects that management simply doesn’t want to do. This “ROI trap” can take several forms: Management argues the project budget is underestimated Management argues the benefits are overly optimistic Management argues the benefits cannot be connected to the proposed initiative…” Read more 180 View – We disagree. The so-called traps are in fact exactly the questions management should be asking. Often the people who are driving the project want it […]

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Successful ERP Implementations: Fact or Fiction

2011 from ProjectTimes – “…What is a successful ERP Implementation and how do we measure whether it was successful or not…” Read more 180 View – The article brings up a great subject but misses the mark in how to define success. The article discusses success in terms of scope, timing, budget with the bottom line that the client is pleased. Clearly all of these are important but we think not enough. We believe that the project should start with a definition of critical success factors (what an organization must do well in order to be successful) and the measurements […]

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