When ERP projects go awry: Surrey County Council incurs £3.2m additional costs in delayed Unit4 project Surrey County Council is set to incur an additional £3.2m costs on its delayed £22m ERP project that is scheduled to replace an ageing SAP R/3 system with Unit4 software-as-a-service. Following a testy council cabinet meeting discussing the budget-busting slippage, the project is set to go before the council's Resources and …
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Also reading the article, there is a suggestion that as usual, this is yet another failure that is in part due IT pushing their preferred solution to IT's specification (after engaging a few consultants who spoke to manglement. IT have then utterly failed to understand that if the system does not do the users need it to do, there will be problems.
The usual course of action is to now blame the failure on the users and project rather than where the actual fault lies: in IT.
This happens again and again. Each time IT wriggle their way out with a load of incomprehensible techno-babble to cover the arses.
Just waving fingers and political point scoring will never fix this. It is a cultural issue that IT perpetuate because it ensure jobs for the boys.
In the time a worked for a LA this happened on most large projects. Each time there was a reorganisation, IT head-count remained static or increased "due to the challenges or running a busy public service".
It depends. As a public sector programme this would have had to have gone through a regulated tender process where any interested suppliers would have had to have mapped the "point in time" business requirements - against the capabilities of the product being recommended for implementation.
I would be highly surprised if the entire process was IT driven only and had no involvement of the end users or business departments.
What I can believe however is : (A) that due to existing workload, the business users or business analysts didn't really take the requirements / process mapping seriously enough, or get enough time with the key parties to review the new system and discuss those overarching business changes. (B) That data migration is hard if the business doesn't really understand its data, how it is used, and where it is silo'd. (C) That even the tea lady generally wants a say in the governance of reports and reporting.
Very likely also (D) the "business users" aren't actually the business users, they're manglement at some higher level who think have no experience of what the current system does day to day, how it's actually used and how the new system needs to work and be used day to day.
"this is yet another failure that is in part due IT pushing their preferred solution to IT's specification"
I don't see anything in the article to suggest that the council even has an IT department let alone one pushing their preferred solution to their specification. A lack of such could well be a reason for failure.
When have you ever seen an ERP project go right? ERP is a four letter word.
Every time I have been involved in one, it's quickly learned that the folks doing the work are usually under-qualified, and then they start asking for change orders for everything, stating the project wasn't scoped correctly. If it does get done, it's usually a hack job that has problems just to say they finished anything, then just continue to request more change orders to fix them, and never really "finish" what so ever.
I pity the folks that have to work with ERP companies and software.
Changing an ERP is a mammoth task. No surprise there are surprise it. However, these surprises should have been anticipated, as any ERP change goes this way.
What I don't understand is why a council need an Entreprise Resource Planning system. What do they produce? What process have they to supervise? What stock do they need to manage? :~
"This is not a failure, there are lessons to be learned": I'll keep this one, could be useful some day ^^
Local authorities typically have:
payroll & expenses
hr - benefits, hiring, reviews, time, approvals, reporting
stock, consumables and stuff they give out/distribute
distribution & warehousing of stuff
assets
purchasing, goods receipt, accounts payable
finance & management accounts
reporting on anything and everything
orders, fees, subscriptions, taxes, receipts
treasury
Think of anything that every type of business might do, somewhere in local authority somebody will be doing just that. At least until it all gets reorganised/split up/tendered/outsourced/merged/abolished.
Maybe using the word enterprise in association with the stereotypical council is a bit hard to swallow, but it's still the same processes. Even if somewhat twisted and mangled into their own worldview.
What process have they to supervise?
Council House Rapairs
Parks Maintenance
School Repairs
What stock do they need to manage?
In the case of council house repairs, the cache of spares they keep - baths, toilets,taps,doors,windows,light fittings...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_service_organisation
In the case of Parks Maintenance, feeds, fertilizers, weed sprays.
In the case of school reparis, chairs,desks,doors..
In the case of grass cuttings, mowers,hedge trimmers, pruners.
It said
" the volume of new or clarified requirements" for the system's HR module, which "emerged during the Build stage when business stakeholders were able to physically see the solution for the first time"
I thought these days ( this century) you gave people a working demo of the front end for people to use - before signed off the requirements.
I remember my sister (a nurse) gave lots of comments... for example.
"It is pretty that the boxes line up - but I do not need an input field 10 chars wide for Mr/Ms/M .. and a only 10 char field for surname"
"Why is the data I need about the patient on page 3 of the system and not the first page? I dont care about patient history when I'm trying to check the pills the patient needs"
"Where is the consultant's name?"
and so on.
The end user requirements had been "obtained" from the office staff - not the ward staff, because the ward staff were too busy.
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