City council audit trail is an audit fail after disastrous Oracle ERP rollout | Hacker News Reader

City council audit trail is an audit fail after disastrous Oracle ERP rollout

theregister.com

29 pointsLinuxBender17 comments

I have never heard of an ERP "rollout" going well. I have to think that those who pick them are paid off very well not to look at the dozens of horror stories that are out there.

Surely the records are somewhere deep in the system/database? Also, 100m for an ERP for a organization that does only $3bn in revenue. That's an absurd ripoff

While I'm no fan of Oracle, the cost of this implementation is likely less absurd than it sounds on it's face.

Rarely are ERP systems implemented at this scale without a lot of ad-hoc customization. I do mean a lot of customization. Implementations also rarely, if ever, go as planned...

ERP systems tend to be the "core" of your organization - with all data and operational processes being managed by the software. You literally build your organization around your ERP.

With that said, organizations like to do things the way they're used to doing things... so they almost always try to make their new ERP system behave similar to their old ERP system. This can get very expensive very quickly.

Then there's ongoing support, etc. This contract likely reserves teams of heavy hitters on stand by, waiting to fastrope into an outage with only a moment's notice. That's also very expensive.

I heard all this when my employer rammed SAP down our throats. Somehow SAP knew our industry and processes better than we did and so we were going to be more competitive and innovative by doing what everyone else was doing. We now have a giant organization devoted to feeding that backalley abortion. Meanwhile, we're less competitive than ever and innovation is dead due to lack of money.

I'm shocked, shocked that Oracle is no better. The chaos IS the point so the consultants can feast.

Meanwhile, Birmingham is slashing funding and services - especially in its highly regarded arts community - because the leeches are feasting on what blood is left.

> I heard all this when my employer rammed SAP down our throats. Somehow SAP knew our industry and processes better than we did and so we were going to be more competitive and innovative by doing what everyone else was doing. We now have a giant organization devoted to feeding that backalley abortion. Meanwhile, we're less competitive than ever and innovation is dead due to lack of money.

To be fair, ERP software has an impossible task at these scales. Say your organization has 10,000 users... each with an opinion on how they think that business process should function or how they'd prefer to change it. It's really important to ram through your $PET_FEATURE because you'll likely be "stuck" with this ERP for the next 10 years, so better get it through now or else!

The folks implementing the ERP customizations end up writing spaghetti because there's no other way to satisfy all of the stake holders (which may range from dozens to thousands depending on the org). It's a failure before it even starts...

However, the alternative of writing your own is even more undesirable. Do you want to do what your org is supposed to do, or spend all of your time implementing a greenfield, entirely custom ERP that will be an unmaintainable mess in a couple years? At least with a contract you have someone to call...

Unfortunately the choice is often between an underfunded internal system that doesn't do everything you want and everyone complains about, or an expensive 3rd party rollout that doesn't do everything you want and everyone complains about.

It is a cultural flip. When the founders/creative/engineering forces start and build a company, business processes exist to support the business. When they leave and are replaced by successive generations of career managers, the business will exist to support the business processes. The parasites like SAP, Oracle, and the management consulting firms attach themselves to the latter caste and eat very, very well.

We were told, "No customizations. Do it SAP's way and do NOT complain. If something doesn't work, it is not SAP's fault." We had no stakes to hold.

If ERP has an "impossible task at these scales," they ought not to claim that their product does otherwise.

Sounds to me like the principal was a seasoned "New ERP" person desperate to control the sprawling scope-creep that inevitably dooms these efforts. I would also wager plenty of customization had been worked out prior to the system being rolled out. SAP, Fusion, etc. are not cookie-cutter software, despite their appearances.

I think you would lose the wager. SAP effectively dictated organizational and process changes. I've had the misfortune of working with SAP's software. User-hostile doesn't begin to describe it. We now have "HANA" after a two year effort for who knows how much. The same grisly interface but now on the web.

Earlier in my career I've worked on and sold these at one of the more expensive shops, yes they are really hard, but I've seen them done successfully for companies with 10x the revenues of the council for 30-50% of the price and project teams with 100s of people. It should never be a $100m job unless the companies is an F500 scale or close.. Obviously if the buyer is unsophisticated or friendly, we were happy to throw bills at them

Yet the residents are the ones that pay 20% more council tax now...

Not in Europe.

Europe is the continent

EU is the exclusive area/group/wtv

It literally is in Europe. Not the EU, but that wasn't the claim.

Interestingly, the rest of that intro/title is apparently debatable: https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/81176/by-which-... (which I only stumbled over while making sure I knew what location we were discussing).

This loose analogy might help you remember the difference:

Europe = North America

EU = USA

What does "audit trail" mean in this case?

It sounds like some product feature that for some reason was optional, and had not been turned on.

Wouldn't the base system of functionality that is always on (not optional) capture information like payments and transfers, including what they're for and who authorized them?

What more information does this optional "audit trail" provide?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com