Re:LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro
by nraynaud on Monday July 16, 2018 @11:42AM
(#17542182)
Can't they split the project and try to introduce the tool or fail by pieces? I know management and sales wants big figures to compute a mass discount and be in the press, but in the nitty gritty, isn't it better to screw up only part of the company?
Re:LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro
by mbesto on Monday July 16, 2018 @11:53AM
(#17542280)
Yes - most roll-outs will do phase approaches (unclear if Lidl did this or not). A good strategy is to do a smaller country roll-out for example, learn all of the lessons and then roll it out elsewhere. It's however not a blanket strategy and requires context to decide which is the right way.
Re:LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro
by hibbelig on Monday July 16, 2018 @02:22PM
(#17543643)
Lidl rolled it out in the smaller countries, learned the lesson that it's not going to work, and stopped it.
ERPs are tedious, uninspiring, production-level software that have to deal with all manners of ill-defined business rules and variations. It's almost impossible to come up with an elegant product because the problem space itself is inelegant and in many cases irreducibly so. I imagine it's hard to attract talented developers (except those solely attracted to money) to this space because the feedback loop and intellectual payoff is so unrewarding. Most of the time the implementation problems have to do with human problems, not technical ones. Most ERP customization is outsourced to pools of fungible labor.
But when you run a large enterprise, ERPs are absolutely necessary, so someone's gotta do it.