Project Governance: The Guardrails for Your ERP or HCM Implementation
ERP failures and pitfalls are not due to chance. Like a car that runs off the roadway, common challenges result from not having the proper guardrails in place. Organizations and teams often think that hiring a strong project manager or one of the big ERP systems integrators will be enough to prevent some of the […]
How to Estimate ERP and HCM Implementation Time
ERP and HCM implementations often take longer than expected. In fact, this happens more often than most in the industry would like to admit. The fact of the matter is that change is hard, and the difficulty of change involved in any ERP or HCM implementation takes time. Forget about cloud solutions, easy-to-use user interfaces, […]
Best ERP Executive Steering Committee Ever?
As ERP consultants that help some of the world’s leading organizations through their digital transformations, we have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly among client team members. Some are well prepared and wired for a successful implementation. Others are misaligned and ill-suited to handle a transformation of this magnitude. Most are somewhere in […]
What Causes ERP Implementation Delays?
As Pink Floyd once said: “every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time.” This classic rock lyric is true for ERP implementations as well. ERP implementation delays are one of the most common problems with digital transformations. Your software vendor or systems integrator assures you that you can do it in that […]
How to Get Executive Alignment on Your ERP or HCM Implementation
Executive misalignment is one of the biggest challenges with ERP and HCM implementations. Misalignment among executive is one issue. Misalignment between an executive team and its transformation team poses a second layer of difficulty during transformations. But what exactly does “alignment” mean? It’s a nebulous term at best. Actually solving the alignment conundrum can be […]
ERP vs. HCM Implementations: Which is the Better Bet?
I don’t know why I didn’t realize this sooner, but I may have discovered the real key to transformation success in the coming years: human capital management (HCM) software implementations. I have spent a good deal of my career analyzing why ERP implementations fail. But if my digital transformation and ERP predictions for 2020 are […]
Lessons from the 2020 ERP and HCM Report
The digital transformation landscape is changing at a breakneck speed. Technology is shifting to the cloud, new functional capabilities are being added at a record pace, and companies implementing these technologies are themselves going through unprecedented changes as well. Against this backdrop, we recently published our 2020 ERP and HCM Report. This annual report captures […]
What is ERP Software? Explaining to My Kids What We Do
Although we advise clients on it every day, ERP software isn’t a commonly known term outside of the IT and consulting industry. Understanding the basics of what ERP software is and how it works is something that we often take for granted as independent ERP consultants. With this in mind, I set out to teach […]
SAP S/4HANA vs. Oracle ERP Cloud: Clash of the Titans
When considering new enterprise technologies, many of our clients consider SAP S/4HANA vs. Oracle ERP Cloud in their ERP software evaluation process. In fact, our upper mid-market and larger enterprise clients choose between these two systems on an extremely frequent basis. In the most recent rankings of the top ERP systems, it’s not surprising that […]
Common ERP Organizational Change Management Challenges
When I’m speaking with executives at our clients, one of the most common things I hear is: “our people are ready for change, so ERP organizational change management isn’t going to be an issue for us.” This is one of the most challenging perceptions to overcome. Employees may be tired of the old legacy systems […]
Lessons from LeasePlan’s SAP ERP Failure
Just weeks after releasing our ranking of the top ERP failures of all-time, European-based fleet management company LeasePlan announced its massive SAP ERP failure. In this same announcement, the company also announced that it was taking a 100M Euro write-off and pulling the plug on its SAP project. What went wrong? Like many past failures […]
Oracle ERP Cloud vs. Oracle NetSuite: An Independent Third-Party Comparison
In the years we have been providing our annual technology-agnostic ranking of the top ERP systems, we have never seen one quite like the list for 2020. Not only were there some surprises on the list – particularly with Service Now, Workday, and SAP S/4HANA – but some vendor products fared better than others. This […]