Waste Management sues SAP over ERP implementation (original article)(itworld.com)
itworld.com
Waste Management sues SAP over ERP implementation (original article)
http://www.itworld.com/App/670/waste-management-sues-sap-080327/
4 comments
I cannot convey how painful an experience I had implementing SAP at my last company. Big companies that aren't technology focused still need a way to keep all their information (orders, customers, inventory, invoices, sales, manufacturing, financials, accounting) organized. With SAP, the cure is worse than the disease.
Well, it's nice to see the snowjob that is enterprise software finally being help to account, but I doubt this suit is going to very far.
I certainly don't want to defend SAP, but when enterprise software sucks, how much is the fault of the software and how much is simply the enterprise? If you started out with good software, could it survive an enterprise deployment -- and all the byzantine requirements and oversight -- intact?
I guarantee you that SAP is guilty as charged, they all are. When I did enterprise software, salespeople kept getting everybody in trouble by selling products that had never existed, in this business such practices are the norm, in fact in many enterprise software companies engineers are advised against speaking to "sales team"
And the engineers are brought in to meetings limited with what they can say; if the truth has a hard edge, its the sales persons job to smooth it over. Essentially, the engineer or tech is handcuffed.
I'm truly not trying to bail out SAP here, but doesn't WM have a little bit of accountability here? How could they purchase something that supposedly is designed for the Waste & Recycling industry and be so far off on their analysis of its fit? If I'm a talent scout for Playboy and I pay Judge Judy $20 million to pose because her husband said she was hot, shouldn't I question my decision capabilities?
The demo was faked. In your analogy, you would see the wife, and she would be hot. But when you ask to see her in the nude the husband says "Not right now, she's not quite ready for that. but can't you see from her in a bikini that she's hot?
They’re a waste management company, not a software company.
My father mentioned SAP told WM the software was '90%' done and so they might as roll it out and patch up the last '10%'. Instead, he said the software was '10%' complete with '90%' completely broken. They had to rollback to the old software as they were losing customers in markets using the new software.
WM is now at least 5 years behind on upgrading their billing systems as they have to basically start the entire process from scratch. SAP tried to deliver a customized version of off the shelf software and failed miserably. I hope they get held accountable and destroyed in court. It disgusts me when companies can take ridiculously large contracts for solved problems and not deliver and then still get away with the money.