While it is nice to hear about ERP success stories, it is equally instructive to analyse stories of ERP faliure. It might come as a surprise to many that ERP failures are quite common. This is in spite of the fact that for the past two and a half decades, ERPs have been implemented year after year in many enterprises around the world and stories of success and faliures, widely shared. If the sheer number of ERP failures (partial or total) are anything to go by, the learning is that ERP implementations cannot at all be taken for granted and organisations going in for ERPs would be well advised to keep their guard up at all times if they wish to have any fair chance at success.
In this backdrop, I would like to share a 2018 monumental ERP faliure story of SAP Implementation at Lidl. Lidl, a large German retailer, spent many years and 580 million USD in installing an ERP and ended up getting nothing ! An abridged but concise account of the Lidl ERP faliure is available here.
Lessons from Lidls SAP faliure provides some additional insights into how such faliures can be avoided.
It is said that failure is a great teacher. Quite true. It's just that in the context of ERPs, the lessons are quite expensive and there is no telling if you have learned them well enough to avoid disaster !
What say reader ?
Hello sir,
ReplyDeleteThank you for yet another informative blog. Surely the telling about the lesson learned is difficult to tell since failing doesn't tell the right path as success does. I think 'it is not how we do it' approach of the institutions and believing ERP will do the whole work now (as you gave example 'send my mail also')lies at the center of failing of ERPs most of the time. However, a proper Change Management Strategy can be crucial in its successful implementation. Since, the success rate is 50-50 there should be a preventive maintenance plan always at hand.
Also, as it was evident from the VLF case, understanding either the big-bang or phased implementation would work according to the institutional need is as much important.