Peoplesoft & SAP Get Schooled

I don't cover many stories like this intentionally. I mean, what's the point? But in this case, well I couldn't resist.

Slashdot is linking to couple of horror stories on teacher's pay.

Eweek is reporting that an SAP debacle has been screwing up teacher's pay in Los Angeles since it's rollout in January of 2007.

Meanwhile, back in the Midwest, the Chicago Sun-times is reporting that a Peoplesoft implementation has screwed up teacher pay in the Chicago area since April of 2007.

I've been involved in a couple of really ugly GP installations but nothing like these two. Frankly, when a project need resources, every reseller I've worked with poured them on. Sometimes it hurt our bonuses to help other folks on these projects but we all stepped up and did it because we knew that this could easily have been our nightmare.

Here's the thing. ERP implementation horror stories go back a long time. They've been out of the news for a while though. It sure seemed like despite the pain, most folks had figured out how to get the job done. I know the GP implementations I keep hearing about are consistently smoother than they used to be.

Nobody's perfect but I actually found the bigger implementations to be smoother because they had professional IT staff who had done this before. Internal ID did a great job of managing resources and expectations all around. They were painful but nobody lost their head.

So here's the lesson for you GP folks out there:

[noise of me stepping on my soapbox]

• Find a good reseller.
  
• Interview your consultants before you give them the project (See Podcast #2).
• Don't skimp on training. It's not yet that easy and you're not yet that smart.

[noise of me stepping off my soapbox]

With successes like this it's no wonder SAP and Peoplesoft want to move into the middle market.