Europe’s biggest city council faces £100M bill in Oracle ERP project disaster

#1

Post by Bender » Thu, May 25, 2023, 1:43 PM UTC

Europe’s biggest city council faces £100M bill in Oracle ERP project disaster
theregister.com

Re: Europe’s biggest city council faces £100M bill in Oracle ERP project disaster

#2

Post by MayeulC » Thu, May 25, 2023, 2:30 PM UTC

Is that an example of the sunk cost fallacy, or corruption/lobbying?

Re: Europe’s biggest city council faces £100M bill in Oracle ERP project disaster

#3

Post by peapicker » Thu, May 25, 2023, 2:30 PM UTC

Implementation partner was EY (Ernst & Young). Taking a heavily customized SAP into anything else is going to be painful, and the wrong partner for implementation can really cost.

Re: Europe’s biggest city council faces £100M bill in Oracle ERP project disaster

#4

Post by phkahler » Thu, May 25, 2023, 2:35 PM UTC

Does ERP really need customisation? That seems to be a big cost driver as well as causing lock-in.

Re: Europe’s biggest city council faces £100M bill in Oracle ERP project disaster

#5

Post by orwin » Thu, May 25, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

Leaving Sap was a good idea, but i'm pretty sure replacing Sap by oracle ERP wasn't. Especially, it seems it's one to one in functionalities?

The better idea is to take a more modular ERP imho, and slowly transition.

Re: Europe’s biggest city council faces £100M bill in Oracle ERP project disaster

#6

Post by rightbyte » Thu, May 25, 2023, 2:38 PM UTC

MayeulC wrote: post #2

Is that an example of the sunk cost fallacy, or corruption/lobbying?

My take is that it boils down to insane requirements from the buyer and yes-men sellers.

The technical problem is wanting one end-all goto system instead of like 20 different utilities I guess.

Re: Europe’s biggest city council faces £100M bill in Oracle ERP project disaster

#7

Post by namdnay » Thu, May 25, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #4

Does ERP really need customisation? That seems to be a big cost driver as well as causing lock-in.

it's less "customisation" than "implementation". they're not changing core code in the system, they're just writing all the config and the workflow apps on top. this is the case for any large organisation, whatever the ERP. And even more the case for a local government that is trying to use a tool designed for industry

Re: Europe’s biggest city council faces £100M bill in Oracle ERP project disaster

#8

Post by daenney » Thu, May 25, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

"The UK's biggest city council faces £100M bill in Oracle ERP project disaster". There's really no need to rope in the whole continent for a specific thing in a specific country. The fact that they're the biggest local authority by population in Europe is really not relevant to anything that's happening here.

Re: Europe’s biggest city council faces £100M bill in Oracle ERP project disaster

#9

Post by jrochkind1 » Thu, May 25, 2023, 2:42 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #4

Does ERP really need customisation? That seems to be a big cost driver as well as causing lock-in.

I think that's the right question that gets at the heart of the ERP mess, but it doens't have a great answer.

In theory, you should be able to have your software support the workflow that works for your specific organization, business, and context. Rather than having to change your workflow to what the machine demands as universal. The latter seems really inhumane.

In practice, it never seems to work out very well. Does _anyone_ like their ERP and it's implementation?

These products are designed around being customizable -- if they gave that up, they'd be much simpler products, which means they'd probably work a lot better (for what they are designed for, which may not be what you need, which is the problem), and be a lot cheaper (which is not necessarily in the interests of the companies that sell them -- the complexity is fine with them, as long as they can keep charging for it, including with their consultants).

It almost makes me wish yo ucould do things without software at all -- but that's a disaster too, this isn't 1970 and pretending it is doesn't work.

There's really no way out. We've built a society where you can't do this without software but the software that would be _good_ takes more skill and resources than society can possibly afford.

Re: Europe’s biggest city council faces £100M bill in Oracle ERP project disaster

#10

Post by magicalhippo » Thu, May 25, 2023, 2:43 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #6

MayeulC wrote: post #2

Is that an example of the sunk cost fallacy, or corruption/lobbying?

My take is that it boils down to insane requirements from the buyer and yes-men sellers. The technical problem is wanting one end-all goto system instead of like 20 different utilities I guess.

I haven't been on projects of this size, but with many of our customers a big issue is that the decisions are taken by people sufficiently high up in the organization that they don't know what's really going on, and without including key resources from lower levels to provide that insight.

In my experience it only takes one or two levels to get to that point.

Regarding the insane requirements, it's also my experience that a lot of companies think they're snowflakes, thinking they do something really special, when they're really just doing what everyone else is. For historical reasons they ended up doing it this way instead of that way and now they'd rather have the world change around them than change their ways.