Brit builders merchant Travis Perkins opts for Oracle after ERP disaster with Infor UK construction supplier Travis Perkins has picked Oracle Fusion Cloud's Financials solution for its core corporate system of record following the failed implementation of Infor ERP. Speaking during a capital markets presentation last week, Phil Tenney, chief information and technology officer, said: "I… think it's important …
Oooh, poor little investors, have they been missing out on their yearly bonuses ? No ? Then where's their pain ?
They're not the ones doing the job.
And, to do the job properly, it would do good to have a bit less buzzword bingo coming down from the top. Nothing this guy has said apparently has anything to do with any technical aspect whatsoever. This guy is living in the clouds, surfing far above whatever issues his minions are battling with every day.
I'm guessing that investors are going to continue to hurt for a while, poor things.
"Yes you have access to one vCore, but this is running on a 128 core/256 vCore machine, so you need to cover those, as they could be used by your system, should it need to be moved"
"Oh and you also have to cover the cost of all the systems in the building, as you may be moved at any time, so theoretically you need to cover all those cores as well. Power of the cloud and all that"
"I see you took the multy location plan, so you'll need to cover all those cores as well, oh and I see this covers three systems, so multiply the current total by 3"
"So that leaves us at eleventy billion... per month"
"Yes I do have some sellotape and string, why do you ask?"
former chief executive had said was "held together by Sellotape and elastic bands."
You would imagine, that being a builders merchant that they would have had easier access to better products such as Duck Tape, Sticks Like Sh*t and that pallet banding metal strip stuff.
Anyone else getting the feeling of "out of the frying pan and into the fire"
Oh, I could hardly contain my glee to finish reading the article and not just immediately jump to comment on this one. If they were disappointed that Infor was held together by "sellotape and elastic bands", I am most interested to hear how they feel about their new choice. My org is implementing Oracle Cloud Fusion for HCM, FIN and SCM. Let me see if I, too, can make some amusing analogies... "Byzantine lead pipe fitted together with paper drinking straws?" No... that's not really fair. "Russian space station Mir after a restoration by Tata Motors." Hrm... Tata might have actually improved matters... Nope. How about, "Big ERP whose only fitness for purpose is to drive the revenue that keeps Larry's yaght stocked with Scotch." That'll do nicely.
Depending on the nature of the work and reasons for failure, that can be completely normal.
In my business I'm sometimes asked to attempt things which can't be assessed for feasibility without doing part of the job. There is no way I'm doing the first part of the work on spec - unless I have a contract to do the rest at a much higher than normal rate if it's possible to continue.
I can well imagine that working for the useless shower of shite that is Travis would fall into the 'not touching it without guaranteed payments' category. I would have thought that most problems with the contract are likely to be caused by Travis buggering the contractor around. But maybe the contractors are useless too, and the two deserve each other.
Actual quote from the article: which it hoped to avoid.
Hoped, past tense, as in all being lost. That's why I didn't quote that part.
Upvote for the other message because, yeah, bargepoles aren't long enough (but a stack of banknotes will do nicely).
There are many reasons a company fails to deliver, and some lies on the customer's side.
Without details, it's hard to say what's happened here. Changing an ERP is one of the most touchy thing, it's close to heart transplant for a company. Without a well-prepared, well-leaded project, there are many reasons it can fail. With those conditions fulfilled too.
I've worked extensively with Infor systems, and think it is a pretty good product.
Where I've seen projects fail is when they are farmed out externally. They hire contractors who have no skin in the game, don't necessarily know the system, and will jump ship before the project is complete - taking their project knowledge with them - for another gig so they have no downtime. And for God's sake don't throw more people at the project. You're going to fragment the knowledge of what is going on, increase communication problems, sow confusion for accountability and actually slow things down.
If this is going to be your system, own it from the beginning. Have your staff get up to speed and plan for and implement it.
They'll be better prepared to support it and address any problems. If you don't have the staff, perhaps rethink what you're doing.
Travis Perkins missed the boat about 10 years ago when everyone else started switching to construction sales online. They are now an industry joke and they still "don't get it". At least they are now trying to do something, but you get the impression that the board comprises people who think their grandkids are experts with that computery stuff etc. Forget about Oracle (sheesh), the big words that are missing are SEO, delivery times and drop ship. If you've got shares... Sell.
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