ERP Projects

Ok the best line I ever heard from a sponsoring executive of an ERP project was the following:

"We are going to war, make no mistake their will be casualties, we will stop and bury our dead we will carry our wounded and infirm, but now let me be clear success is our only objective so we will shoot the stragglers"

I'm telling you that a benevolent dictatorship is the only way to run projects. Of course you need the input of great people, and the trust that your decisions are well thought out and supportable. This does not means you just satisfy everyone, but it means that you analyzed the pros and cons and gain a level of consensus that you didn't "miss" something...PS this is where your TOP consultants should really pay a dividend they are supposed to "KNOW" from experience.

Great projects are not about lying to yourself about what you can accomplish, its about knowing your limits, and getting to the truth. And trusting consultants who can say "no"..

Stupid and Cheap

Okay...back to the basics...My father told me you can't be stupid and cheap...
Now what does that mean? well he explained...if your stupid you need lots of money to pay people to do the stuff you don't know how to do, and if your cheap you better be really smart!

This goes for customers too. I wonder what people negotiate today when they hire a consulting firm to do anything? I mean really, if you had the skill then you would not need them would you? (there goes my dad's saying again)

Ok one more thing, not to take any shots at the globalization of consulting, but lets be real...Why does Anyone think that the "process, localization, consultative skills" required for successful implementations can be done remotely or even with "technology skills" I mean heres an example, one of my best friends Meenagi Venkat who s now a VP at IBM (but was the best ever SAP consultant that ever lived) told a story one day in front of a client..s BIG client, in the Telecom industry, starts with a V.

Well, many of the vendors were talking about their "offshore" consulting headcount.
One said they had 10,000 SAP CONSULTANTS, (already using the consulting word was an insult), and others said 5,7,4, thousands of consultants...So Meenagi ask the client to just follow the math...(it was 2000 when this occurred, but the number would not change that significantly)

He said "lets assume that Indian companies, EMEA or North American based companies had done 200 SAP implementations in India over the last 5 years, and lets say that no consultant ever repeated on any engagement, and lets say the avg size of the SAP team was 20 team members, how many Indian based (life cycle experienced) SAP consultants are there? Simple math says 4000 right, but would you call a (1) life cycle person a consultant? Not me...

Anyway...clients have brought doom upon themselves, commoditizing skills and putting success at risk every time,,,

PS I don't care if its India,Russia,Romania,Vietnam or China..its all bull unless you dive deeper...

But I guess you can be stupid and cheap Dad...god rest his soul...

Listen close someone is always lying

So I forgot to get on and post the IBM and Oracle ...Sun debacle..

Sun did fine, lots of guys at the top richer than ever , but as usual the people in the trenches that kept Sun alive are being cast aside..

on the IBM front, Palmisano was throwing furniture over losing JAVA...his people screwed this up big time...if your portfolio and integration effort was so JAVA focused (geez IBM had more Java Developers than Sun did) then you can't fathom why they would not have just paid the 5 bucks more????

Reminds me of the book Bib Blues, good reading if you want to watch the mistakes that IBM made over the years, includes xerography patent, RISC proceesors, DOS/Windows, Intel bailout, Wang bailout...and so much more we can cover some of this in the blog one day....

But back to missing Java. Larry Ellison will monetize and license Java and make IBM miserable, its not open source so he can somewhat do what he wants..and the IBM Websphere stack will be in a nuclear holocaust!

So Larry laughs, Suns top guys get rich(er) IBM gets screwed and the Sun little people get wiped.. all in all exactly how the world works bad guys win again...(gee does that mean IBM is good guys? lets not take the leap yet)


Tomorrow we talk about the CLOUD.....hahahaha I'm laughing already

Oh joy, now we see that the Venture capitalists are back to buying Bargain Basement ERP..

So the best partices game and the WEB 2.0 game is not working and its back to the consolidation game and all the CRAP about SOA... SO(A) WHAT..

If INFOR and Golden Gate had any idea what they were doing they would hope that Ellison buys them!

Hey I did a pitch on package selection done by the mafia its was pissing funny!!!

Ok so today I really am miffed, why to executives even talk about technology in a conversation especially platform? If the application you like runs on a toaster who the heck cares....come on! I know the operating system and database discussion are RELIGIOUS issues but really unless these guys take the time to really investigate the plus and minus of each issues of each why do they care!!!..They all think reading an article on a plane is the defintion of IT strategy..

My good freind Jerry and I would call lots of these people Rock Duck technolgists, just mactching Nouns and Verbs to together to make "technology based sentences....Like..If you use the VPN alternatives to Dul-Core Procsoore based LINUX then you Improve your RISC speed to the Web 2.0 paradigm shitf (YES PARDIGM oh I hate that woord)...

Just Rock and Duck based nouns surrounded by verbs...

Yea, well todays the day///I know there's is no picture here yet deciding still, maybe a,.... nah i'll wait...also be aware right from the start that spelling won't count. I pursue the random thoughts method of blogging and i don't stop to see if its spelled correct

What you will find here is me ranting about the occupational hazard of consulting both for the consultant and the client. I will start with what the great Larry Feiwel told me...I good consultant say yes a great consultant says no...

No before i get to killing the occupation I will say this, you can't be stupid and cheap... and we will go from there..

PS larry ellison is right... technolgy is like womens wear..we announce new names and colors for old things every season...