Nine months ago, I left the world of consulting. Now that I sit on the other side of the table at sales meetings, I often find myself listening to a sales pitch and thinking back on some of the biggest myths that surrounded major consulting projects.
For anyone who is thinking about entering into a large-scale system implementation, keep these myths in mind the next time you find yourself in awe of a glossy PowerPoint presentation.
The 10-Month Myth: "Sure, we can implement a full ERP system (SAP, Oracle, take your pick) across your entire organization in 10 months." No. Just no. I've walked on to multiple projects with a 10-month project plan. Most of them ended up running from 18-36 months. No one implements an enterprise-wide system in 10 months. Starting with a 10-month plan simply means that you will end up spending extra money in change requests and hiring additional resources, not to mention the stress of explaining to your organization why the project is running months or years behind schedule. This myth is largely perpetuated, though, by myth two...
The Vanilla Myth: "We can implement your system in no time if you go vanilla." "Going vanilla" means that you don't customize the system. You use it exactly as it is designed. Most companies think, with the absolute best intentions, that they can implement a system without making any changes. Six months into the project, they realize they can't. Now, not only do they need to do a lot of re-work to make all of the customizations that they should have been making from the start, but they've also just wasted 6 months of time and money trying to implement a system that was never going to work for them.
Tell me what you think. Has your project suffered because of these myths? Have you been on a successful 10-month ERP implementation?
