I have never worked an ERP gig. Let me share with you almost as much as I know about ERP, and it may explain why I haven’t.
I’ve never heard a first hand account of an ERP implementation that came in on time, under budget, and achieved its initial objectives.
I’ve never heard of an ERP system that wasn’t in some sort of transition. I only hear ERP discussed when people are either building it, migrating it, upgrading it, improving it, or replacing it.
I never hear how great they are, except in TV ads.
Maybe that’s why ERP companies need to advertise, because its difficult to find customer advocates of ERP.
Among technology people I know that have worked on ERP projects, it is the elephant in the room.
I have a feeling its a white elephant.
I would like to hear an ERP success story. One that lived up to its promises the business units were sold on.
Until then, whenever someone is pumping up anything ERP, I’m going to assume it has something to do with Early Retirement Planning.
Sarcasm aside, I’m not sure if this this a problem with ERP solutions specifically. Perhaps ERP is just a common target of derision that suffers problems symptomatic of greater IT project management issues that are uncovered in the complexity of an ERP implementation.
One Comment
I had someone share an erp story this morning…how it almost killed a $100M business, but a 200k accounting package implementation in a much more technically complex setting was a huge success. Another story of a 6 month, $500k implementation not complete after 2 years and $2 million is another…I've evaluated them, but never implemented. There's a reason.