Accenture dares to enter site of US Air Force mega ERP-project disaster

Not many companies would be willing to walk into a house haunted by one of the world’s biggest ERP disasters, but Accenture is happy to give it a go for a thick wodge of greenbacks. The global consultancy and outsourcing outfit has been awarded an $89.5m five-year contract to build a new cloud-based common infrastructure for …

[cbars]

Me

[Anonymous Coward]

"Accenture is happy to give it a go for a thick wodge of greenbacks"

If you have the thick wodge of greenbacks, you can always count on Accenture to show up. Just like a giant, corporate vulture spying a moribund, bloating wildebeast.

[NeilPost]

Re: "Accenture is happy to give it a go for a thick wodge of greenbacks"

Looking at previous history Oracle walked away with a £5.2 VM was spaffed all over them. No plans to sue ??

Accenture can smell the money.

[macjules]

Ouch

Having been mauled for their inability to deliver Hertz's website one might have thought the USAF would have done their research.

Wait, what I am saying? it's government so of course the most expensive and least competent tender wins the contract.

[johnB]

Have I worked on a system developed by Accenture? Yes.

Would I ever give them a penny of my money? No.

[Potemkine!]

Not many companies would be willing to walk into a house haunted by one of the world’s biggest ERP disasters

The technical teams wouldn't be willing, but the sales ones will always be happy to take someone's money. After all they are not the ones who will have to deal with the consequences.

[David Lewis 2]

Did I miss something?

Final Project Update:

1. We have shifted your (non functional) ERP system into the cloud (AWS/Azure/Whatever).

2. We have carried out extensive testing of the new implementation and confirmed that it is exactly as non functional as the original.

3. Here is our bill.

[Erik4872]

Pay me enough and I'd do it!

All of the consulting companies have a Teflon reputation. I don't know what it is, whether the partners let the CEOs they golf with win, or buy them the most expensive dinners (or after-dinner "entertainment"). But, what I do know is that they will continue to be hired regardless of how badly they screw things up. Part of this is being a professional scapegoat for the CEOs, but the only other thing I can attribute it to is old-boys-club networking, or the consultancies embedding former employees in customer companies as executives.

I feel bad for the 57,485 new graduates that are going to be put on airplanes week after week working on a doomed-to-fail project. Accenture's (and EY's, and McKinsey's...) entire business model revolves on hiring private school graduates with no work experience and indoctrinating them into the ways of the firm. Seriously, you have 25 year olds telling executives what to offshore/outsource, who to fire, etc. who've never done anything more than work at Starbucks for a couple summers. It's why Harvard charges $65K a year...jobs with these companies are well-paid and practically graduation presents.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Proper Motivation Prevents Poor Performance

I feel bad for the 57,485 new graduates that are going to be put on airplanes week after week working on a doomed-to-fail project.

Airplanes you say? The client has those. So in order to focus the minds of contractor leads, I suggest a modest proposal. Like hold progress meetings inside the bomb bay of a B-52. Then project manager's beloved traffic light system would also be familiar to USAF personnel, although they may be more familiar with parachuting. Hold meetings say, over the mid-Pacific or Atlantic, and problems could be simply and swiftly resolved. As could snags using a sharp knife. Me, I'm not sure I'd give the Accenture execs a parachute though. I would familiarise them with clouds however..