

Waste Management sues SAP over ERP implementation (original article) - rglovejoy
http://www.itworld.com/App/670/waste-management-sues-sap-080327/

======
seekely
Funny, I was just talking to my dad about this today. He works in finances for
Waste Management and told me how much of a complete disaster rolling out the
SAP system was. Screens would take minutes to go between, entering new
customers into the system took 15 minutes as opposed to the promised minute,
and customer orders were getting lost and duplicated constantly. The software
basically could not handle any load at all. And this was just in one of WM's
smallest markets.

My father mentioned SAP told WM the software was '90%' done and so they might
as roll it out and patch up the last '10%'. Instead, he said the software was
'10%' complete with '90%' completely broken. They had to rollback to the old
software as they were losing customers in markets using the new software.

WM is now at least 5 years behind on upgrading their billing systems as they
have to basically start the entire process from scratch. SAP tried to deliver
a customized version of off the shelf software and failed miserably. I hope
they get held accountable and destroyed in court. It disgusts me when
companies can take ridiculously large contracts for solved problems and not
deliver and then still get away with the money.

------
snowbird122
I cannot convey how painful an experience I had implementing SAP at my last
company. Big companies that aren't technology focused still need a way to keep
all their information (orders, customers, inventory, invoices, sales,
manufacturing, financials, accounting) organized. With SAP, the cure is worse
than the disease.

------
run4yourlives
Well, it's nice to see the snowjob that is enterprise software finally being
help to account, but I doubt this suit is going to very far.

~~~
wanorris
I certainly don't want to defend SAP, but when enterprise software sucks, how
much is the fault of the software and how much is simply the enterprise? If
you started out with good software, could it survive an enterprise deployment
-- and all the byzantine requirements and oversight -- intact?

~~~
tx
I guarantee you that SAP is guilty as charged, they all are. When I did
enterprise software, salespeople kept getting everybody in trouble by selling
products that had never existed, in this business such practices are the norm,
in fact in many enterprise software companies engineers are advised against
speaking to "sales team"

~~~
lvecsey
And the engineers are brought in to meetings limited with what they can say;
if the truth has a hard edge, its the sales persons job to smooth it over.
Essentially, the engineer or tech is handcuffed.

------
yankees1
I'm truly not trying to bail out SAP here, but doesn't WM have a little bit of
accountability here? How could they purchase something that supposedly is
designed for the Waste & Recycling industry and be so far off on their
analysis of its fit? If I'm a talent scout for Playboy and I pay Judge Judy
$20 million to pose because her husband said she was hot, shouldn't I question
my decision capabilities?

~~~
phoenix
The demo was faked. In your analogy, you would see the wife, and she would be
hot. But when you ask to see her in the nude the husband says "Not right now,
she's not quite ready for that. but can't you see from her in a bikini that
she's hot?

