back to article London councils to spunk £25m on SAP deal

Haringey and Waltham Forest councils have advertised for a framework contract to deliver an SAP solution valued at between £12m and £25m. In a notice in the Official Journal of the European Union the two London councils say the eight-year deal will cover a wide range of services. They include software development, project …

COMMENTS

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  1. Blofeld's Cat
    FAIL

    I see...

    "typical local government processes"

    That would presumably be something like dreaming up some grandiose scheme with zero chance of success and then putting up the council tax to cover the cost.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    SAP...

    Please...no....

    Keeps me in work though...

    1. Chris Miller
      FAIL

      Does anyone know

      of a SAP solution that came in (a) on time; (b) within budget; and (c) saved money? No-one??

      What about any one of three???

      1. Andrew 87
        Happy

        Implemented SAP in 2000, on time (6 months start to finish), within budget and saved the company over £1,000,000 in stock reduction over the following 12 months.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Reminds me of the old Marketing phrase...

        ... Good, Fast and Cheap, you can pick any 2.

        I found it quite useful to stop management interferring in a Project, tends to make them sit up and think for a minute or 2.

      3. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        Boffin

        RE: Does anyone know

        Last two SAP roll-outs went fine, in budget and even ahead of schedule. Initial SAP implementation was another story (almost a year behind schedule, about 20% overbudget, and with half the savings lost because features we'd wanted couldn't be implemented on time), but the learning curve on that initial jaunt helped us plan more realisticly since. A strong project manager with real SAP knowledge, and with a high-powered cattleprod to keep the beancounters in check, seems to be key.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I think your sums may be out.

    They're estimating £12m-£25m for a public sector SAP project. Your title should probably read "...to spunk £50m..." to be a little closer to the truth...

  4. tirk
    Facepalm

    It's so nice to be in such a period of prosperity we can afford Rolls Royce projects like this!

    And, as ever, if the project should be delayed, or over budget, the management who approved it will have moved on to bigger and better jobs (or retirement) by then.

  5. H2Nick

    Maybe I'm just being pessimistic

    While I can see that one SAP system could support a load of local councils (not just 2), so provide good value, the public sector IT record says we will probably be reading "lessons learned" in about 2016, once this is all scrapped..

    It's not even like Haringey has a good record so far...

    http://www.lynnefeatherstone.org/issues/haringey-council

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    hahahahahahahaha

    "disaster recovery services" - they'll be needing those

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's not SAP's fault

    I'm a SAP ABAP developer, it's my day job. Our system is well run and maintained and runs the business efficiently. We develop new features slowly in consultation with the business and we consistently deliver on time, to budget (often under budget) and save the company money or allow it to do something new. I am proud of what we do and have done.

    Our parent company also uses SAP, their system is a spaghetti mess of code and exceptions. Everything they do is a disaster, costs a fortune, arrives late and causes chaos. Most SAP projects go like this and it's not really SAP that's at fault. It's poor project management that is usually at fault and we all know how good government and local government is at that...

    While I accept that "our" SAP system is an exception, don't blame the more typical failures on SAP. Business systems are complex and people are not good at doing complex things.

    1. Andrew 87

      "Business systems are complex and people are not good at doing complex things."

      In my experience business process are simple, management makes them complex, and most people don't question the logic of why something is done a certain way.

  8. nichomach
    Trollface

    Oh dear...

    "The solution has to be based on "typical local government processes""

    So it'll only clean up its trash bin every two weeks, be completely unavailable except when noone wants to use it, completely ignore user requests, keep demanding more and more money whilst becoming slower and less responsive, display increasingly threatening but incomprehensible messages to innocent users and kill off services that are in use without explanation. Outstanding!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    SAP

    The problem with any SAP implementation is decision by committee. What you need is key decision makers who can make and stand by their choices. Group decisions are like 20 women choosing a dress and this is absolutely the case in ERP implementations. Unless you focus experts in field on the process it will fail.

    Problem is that in public sector every decision seems to be made by committee so...

    1. BorkedAgain
      Meh

      ...including choosing the selection panel who are responsible for overseeing the process of deciding who forms the committee, naturally...

  10. drake
    Facepalm

    SAP... for dummies.

    SAP - Systems Applications and Products - for companies who don't know how to create their own systems/programs...come on be brave, grow a pair - recruit your own devs, and develop something decent. Thank you and goodnight.

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