> It is set to re-implement an "out of the box" version of the solution after <i>customizations in the first effort</i> disrupted its bank reconciliation system.<p>Root cause.<p>When you buy from an ERP vendor, you are not just buying software, you are buying a logical model of an idealized corporation. If that model doesn't reflect your actual organization, you can <i>try</i> to customize the software, but beyond some threshold of mismatch, it's easier to change your accounting & control & governance processes to match the software.<p>SAP and Oracle are no different in this respect.
Any IT transformation project like this is always hampered by people wanting customisations. Those customisations are usually to support Janet in office A who demands that she damn well isn't going to make changes to her workflow that she's done since she started in 1995.
I think the Uk could show some gusto here and implement these systems in-house and open sourced. There’s nothing innovative or unsolved in this domain.
I'm probably expressing this to the wrong crowd but I think a city is too big when it can possibly lose 216m pounds messing around with software. That could have done a lot of good somewhere but it got blown into the wind instead. Think about that the next time you are working extra hard to make retirement. Your city might just take your taxes and throw them away.
These days for ERP, you should make sure the contract specifies if the cost rises to a specific amount, it is canceled and the vendor refunds 50%.<p>Most of this I blame on the Sales People. They will promise anything to make the sale. Somehow part of the risk should be borne by the vendor.
"The cost of the Oracle project increased from an initial estimate of £19 million to a projected cost of £131 million, including the re-implementation."<p>When something gets 10 times more expensive than anticipated, there is some serious mismanagement and political 'death march' involved.<p>This longing for 'one system' is probably the fundamental problem. And these consultant firms with slick salespeople feeding on the procurers' dreams.
Replacing SAP for Oracle to me feels like replacing one evil for another.<p>Besides the companies themselves constantly upselling you and having idiotic licensing terms. Both are very much the sort of companies with products you only are "able" to implement with extremely expensive outside consultants.