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- Glastnost at SAP
- For many years, SAP was a poster child for the "not invented here" syndrome. Sure, the company has always been developer-focused, but arrogance in any form is unpleasant. Recently, I've heard stories about a new openness at SAP, so I read this post from fellow Enterprise Irregular, Thomas Otter, with...
- Tags: Vendor relationships
- Blog posts 2007-07-27
- Keeping SAP and Oracle Honest?
- From an interview in Computerworld with Harry Debes, CEO of Lawson Software: Some SAP and Oracle accounts acquired Lawson for some of their divisions simply because they don’t want the incumbent vendor to dictate the future terms of business to them and for them to have all their apples in...
- Tags: Vendor relationships
- Blog posts 2007-07-23
- Hourly Projects and the Cult of Doom
- Recently, I was party to a discussion on the topic of hourly contracts in enterprise software services. Here is my take:Open-ended, hourly projects often balloon in size and scope, precisely because there is little incentive to control costs. In this scenario, the services provider can maximize billable hours, while the...
- Tags: Vendor relationships
- Blog posts 2007-07-18
- "Independence and Objectivity are a Lot Like Virginity"
- Brian Sommer always posts thoughtful, insightful articles on his Services Safari blog, and today is no exception. His piece entitled, Which Consultants are a Waste of Money, really gets to the heart of the matter. Heres an abbreviated version of Brians guidelines to help you evaluate your own consultants. See...
- Tags: Vendor relationships, Consulting
- Blog posts 2007-07-12
- SAP Falls Off BusinessWeek 100 IT List
- SAP has fallen off the BusinessWeek list of top 100 IT companies. From the article, here is the explanation why SAP was removed:SAPA new line of software from SAP will let customers tap into programs on an SAP [NYSE:SAP] server and use SAP functions without installing and maintaining...
- Tags: Vendor relationships
- Blog posts 2007-06-25
- Four Questions for Selecting Mission-Critical Software
- The Evolving Excellence blog has a strongly-worded article against implementing SAP at a particular company with $5M in annual revenue. The argument basically says that a simpler, less expensive, system would work just as well for a business of that relatively small size. While the truth of this perspective is...
- Tags: Vendor relationships, Project strategy, Implementation
- Blog posts 2007-06-25
- Avoiding Failure with SaaS
- CIO Update describes the growing trend toward software as a service SaaS products. The artcle argues that SaaS implementations are less expensive and failure-prone than traditional enterprise software deployments: Before Salesforce.com rolled out its first services in 2001, companies that wanted to keep track of sales leads...
- Tags: Vendor relationships
- Blog posts 2007-06-14
- Vendor Integrity
- Dennis Howlett raises some questions to be used when evaluating lawyers and accountants. Similar guidelines could be applied when hiring consultants on IT projects.How messy is your lawyer's desk? When they bill you for thirty minutes of "file review," how much of that time was spent looking for your file?When...
- Tags: Vendor relationships
- Blog posts 2007-01-03
- Greed, Arrogance, Inexperience, and Stupidity
- Greed, arrogance, inexperience, and stupidity are the essential quartet driving many IT project failures. Bring this set of factors together, and failure is practically inevitable. All too often, vendors and customers angle to get as much as possible out of each other, ignoring the fact that fairness and mutual respect...
- Tags: Vendor relationships, Project failures
- Blog posts 2006-12-21
- Failing Before Starting
- Problems on many IT project failures can be traced back before the project even started. For example, weve all seen poorly-designed projects, that should never have seen the light of day. Whether for political reasons, short-sighted management, or plain old hubris, some IT projects are simply stupid to undertake. They...
- Tags: Vendor relationships, CIO issues
- Blog posts 2006-12-21
- Sleaze Pretending to be Innovation
- I write this blog and see lots of weird stories, many of which I find hard to believe. Today's topic is a good example, and deals with manipulative behavior justified in the name of innovation.We all know that innovation involves accepting some level of calculated and anticipated risk. Sometimes, however,...
- Tags: Vendor relationships, IT issues
- Blog posts 2006-11-02
- Packaged Services in ERP
- Following up on a post about IBM packaged services, Prashanth Rai from the CIO Weblog asked me the following question in an email:Yes, it looks like IBM is trying to do something that could really turn into tangible benefit for services customers. This seems to be a step...
- Tags: Vendor relationships, Packaged Services
- Blog posts 2006-10-25
- More Productized Services from IBM
- IBM is really pushing the packaged services. Here is information from CXOtoday.com:Information Lifecycle Management ILM Service Product: It is designed to classify data according to age and relevance to a company's business. It applies best practices conforming to regulatory guidelines. It enables clients strategically adopt storage optimization, virtualization and archiving...
- Tags: Vendor relationships, Packaged Services
- Blog posts 2006-10-25
- Avoiding IT Project Failure
- Writer Andy McCue of Silicon.com offers some helpful comments on avoiding failure on large IT projects: The software itself is now rarely the cause of [huge failures], the root cause of which can more often be linked to the massive business and process change associated with implementing an ERP...
- Tags: Vendor relationships, Project success
- Blog posts 2006-10-19
- PeopleSoft - 70% Disappointment in Oracle Services
- Jason Corsello writes about a PeopleSoft User Panel at the recent HR Technology Conference. Generally, the PeopleSoft customers were satisfied, except in one important area: Oracle service and support. This was probably the most interesting part of the session. Each of the panelists stated they were generally...
- Tags: Vendor relationships, Implementation
- Blog posts 2006-10-11
- More on Productized Consulting Services
- IBM recently announced a new line of standardized service offerings. ComputerWorld has an article today expressing some concerns from customers, who wonder whether they will continue receive the same level of service from IBM as in the past.From the article:But [Christopher Smith, IT director for the Bath Central School District...
- Tags: Vendor relationships, Packaged Services
- Blog posts 2006-10-02
- Consultant Addiction
- Dan Tynan writes in InfoWorld about consultants who seem to hang around forever and suggests methods for escape. You know the type: they rack up endless billing for their clients without much to show for it. A few choice bits from the article:Step No. 1: Admit you have a problemHow...
- Tags: Vendor relationships, Project management, Documentation
- Blog posts 2006-08-31
- Implementation and Consultants
- An interesting discussion related to consulting ecosystems, software implementation failures, and complexity, from Charles Zedlewskis blog.From the discussion quoting myself this time:Implementation failures generally do not have a root cause based in technology. Failures usually come from arrogance, inexperience, or greed on the part of the vendor, consultant, or customer.
- Tags: Vendor relationships, Implementation
- Blog posts 2006-08-29
- When Friends Disagree
- This one is short, but irresistible.According to the Kansas City Business Journal, Sprint Nextel is suing IBM for $6.4 million, demanding a refund for over119,000 hours in labor worked on an outsourcing contract. The contract included a clause guaranteeing that Sprint would receive specific productivity improvements as a result of...
- Tags: Vendor relationships, Project failures
- Blog posts 2006-05-29
- Throwing Good Money After Bad?
- The Charlotte Observers Carrie Levine describes an ugly IT situation faced by Mecklenburg County, NC. Heres what happened. In 2001, Mecklenburg County signed a contract with a company called PEC Solutions subsequently bought by Nortel Government Systems to build a criminal justice information system. The original budget isnt stated in...
- Tags: Vendor relationships, Project failures, Government projects
- Blog posts 2006-05-20
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