In a related post I copied an WSJ article that discusses a very large ERP system implementation at Dow Chemical. The system processes ~ 7 million transactions / day and counts > 16,000 unique daily users.
Note: I was a member of this implementation team (i.e. a very small portion of the $1Bn paid my salary).
You can answer one of these questions as an alternate ? for this week:
- Why would an implementation take this long and cost so much?
- Given the information shared – why would Dow Chemical company approve such a large investment?
1.. Why would an implementation take this long and cost so much?
I think the key part of the article that answers this question is: “people were performing the same work differently,” While each location may have had well defined processes, there was no single right way to do things. There likely would be redundant data from external entities that deal with multiple locations, different data stored in each location, and different data requirements. This can be messy to combine into a single coherent database. Each of the locations now has to be retrained on the right way to do things, which sounds easy, but there were surely people involved who had done things a certain way for 20+ years who now had to adapt, and that isn’t easy.
Another major factor that we don’t often think about in an academic environment is that you can’t disturb the ongoing operations of the business during a project like this. While implementing the “new” way of doing things, people still have to do things the “old” way to keep the lights on. While some employees are dedicated to the project 100%, some key people have other responsibilities, and their involvement in the project is done in between these other things.