"If you don’t set them up from the start with the right people, product, partners, and expectations, you may as well not start at all.", Heller stated in her article. The failure in the story or situation the author has established started when the ERP project had run amok and all they have is a newly hired CIO to take care of the problem because the former CIO, who was there at the start and knows the system very well, has already retired from the job.
Instead of digging deeper into the problem, the author simply learned from the story and came up with a helpful list of 'Do Not's'. The reason why we can never solve the problem in the story, by analysis, is that the mistake has already been done and there is nothing the new CIO can do about it. The new CIO would only have to evaluate the impact of the mistake to the company and think about leaving the company the next day.
In effect, the company had to start over from scratch and the CFO, who is by the way responsible of hiring a new CIO, was held accountable for the damage ergo he's dead. From this, we can conclude that the successes and failures ERP Implementation greatly depends on how much you've worked hard for it at the start. This means perfection is mandatory in ERP and as CFO, you need to watch out for CIO's who has already plotted out their escape plan conveniently after hell breaks loose in an ERP Project.
1.Conduct research on the Web Sites of either CIO Magazine or CFO Magazine for stories about ERP implementation successes and failures. Using specific examples, describe the reasons for the successes and failures. What conclusions can be reached?
