Lol I have never heard of a single happy customer of Oracle. How do they stay in business? Is it just about finding new people to scam every year?
Long story short, they loved the proposal but they were quite clear that unless we “partnered” with a company like IBM, we had no chance.
The reasoning I was given was that they needed a company that was big enough to be able to accept liability for failure. In other words, someone they could theoretically sue.
It was one of the most depressing meetings I’ve ever attended.
If your limits are high enough, some customers would find that acceptable.
Probably good that we didn’t get it, in hindsight.
When you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re spending other people’s money, the greater the cost and complexity the greater your accomplishment looks.
They know, very very well, that if they screw up the first part, the second part will be undeliverable. Of course, a local council would not know this.
So the blame is entirely on them. That's the job they bid for. They may be cynically doing a bad job on the first part, convincing the local gov that it's their fault, then exploiting that for more time/money.
This seems highly likely.
A newer tech consultancy might not realise that this is the biz they are in; oracle do. You job is business process consultancy using IT.