I appreciate you guys taking nice shots at the problem . I did implement several SAP projects and from my experience . I will list a few reasons why a SAP implementation fails

1. Bidding process involves a Sales person from Consulting side and a Senior managers from the Client side . Both of them don’t have any clue what SAP can do and cannot and they come out with this magical numbers that they expect the consultants to meet the target. Mind you, the $200/hr is charged by the consulting company is eaten away by the consulting company and the consultant will gets a very little cut from the deal.

2. most of the Project Managers in failed projects primarily work with Spreadsheets they might have never worked with SAP and has a very little knowledge of SAP , they interveiw the candidates and bring some sweet talkers without stuff on to the projects who charge the hours but does nothing …Typically they spend time talking about their flight home and steak they had the last night.I have seen this in some of my projects.

3. Finally there is always a chnage of business decisions in the middle of the project which needs a scope change that adds more burden to the project.

My dear realskill , “You will get what you pay for. And if you pay $200/hr to those “consultants” from countries where there’s no electricity or running water you are ripped off” … These people are hungry and they work hard to keep their jobs so that they can have electricity and water when they go back home . The ones who rip you off is the one who enjoys steak and wine on the company’s perdigm and always bothered about taking the next flight going home. Realskill I am amazed at your ignorance get in to the real world with real skill

Government bureaucrats are always far more inefficient than private sector. The story is bigger than consulting companies, cheap labor, requirements gathering, or software problems: it’s the government in comparison to private sector.

Read the 1st sentence again: There is a growing number of failed SAP public sector deployments…

Think about it when you go to vote. What’s better: higher taxes and bigger government OR lower taxes and bigger private sector.

Yes, I know there have been failures in private sector, but it’s nothing compared to numbers and amounts of government failures since Marx and 1867.

In my experience, it’s not the SAP software that’s at fault. In very, very general terms, it starts with how in-depth the scoping exercise was, what was promised in the resultant statement of work, chemistry and personality mix of clients and consultants, etc. The products from these sets the stage for what comes next!

Governmental entities are in far less control over their business rules than private companies. In many cases, political, regulatory, or legal concerns will not allow the necessary adjustments in business practices in order to use the software effectively or at all.

SAP Consultant.

I live in Portland and the city does not have a history of wasting money. They, like all corporation have had some big failures, not much different than any large organization, e.g. military, corporations, governments etc.

E.g. Portland has a history of bringing in their light rail projects ahead of time and under budget again and again. Cities do not ‘piss away’ taxes as you maintain. Instead they build infrastructure so that we have a place to do business and make a living. In Portland, government is not the enemy, it is the solution (as in most cities). W/o a ‘commons’ there would be no business, commons cost money. Taxes are not evil, just go to some third world countries and look at what a lack of infrastructure gets you where taxes are not paid or not collected.

I live in Portland and it is clear from reports here that as usual the fish stank from the head down. The Portland management went for the lowest bid and they had a contract that was not honored, because after the fact the costs went up hugely. The consulting company said that the Portland City managers changed the goalposts. Interestingly, the final numbers now are around what other companies not chosen originally bid. Portland went for the cheapo solution and paid the price.

The situation is not much different than the mid-1990s when because of a paucity of SAP skills any w/a certification were hired. Nowadays that seems t/b replaced by anyone who is cheap. It is not ‘free trade’ it is ‘free labor’ or better described ‘cheap labor’.

As the size of the organisation increases, so does the quantity of information that needs to be tracked. Most times companies under estimate the amount of in house study that needs to be done to understand their own processes and many a time, consulting companies that are brought on board will assume even the minute(st) of detail will not significantly inpact a tried a tested methodology of implementation.

Both organisations can blame one another, but that does not mean that the next guy to get on with the implementation will not fall in teh same trap. I would imagine that by the time Portland has numerous legacy systems, than there must be alot of un synchronised information across the organisation.

All in all from the word go, scoping, team formation, requirements gathering, planning, study and design were not fully covered in the project and as such, even if they hired the best consultants, i would not expect any success as per project timelines.

The City does not build anything, they really don’t add value, they just need a good accounting system to take the money away from their citizens and piss it away. This story shows the incompetence of Government at its best. The public sector is incapable of dealing with the realities of the real world since if they need money they just take it away from hard working people.