Assignment

There have been more than a few newsworthy failures to succeed relating to the implementation of enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) that resulted in lawsuits between companies and contracted solution providers.

Large-scale roll-outs of ERP systems are notoriously difficult to pull off seamlessly and are fraught with cost overruns.

Inadequate training, employee groups' buy-in or failure to embrace change to a utilization of the new technology, poorly designed or incompatible software with legacy systems, and other factors are often stated to be the source of the difficult transitions when implementing ERP systems.

Discuss

For this assignment, conduct research on the topic of ERP systems.

If you were the CIO of a large enterprise and the implementation of an ERP system was going badly, where would you begin to try to determine what was causing the difficulties that are being encountered in the project?

For example, would you bring in an outside consultant or rely on in-house talent to track down the causes that resulted in the less-than-optimal outcomes? Why would you choose one resource over the other?