It seems the higher the budget, the greater the chances are for a business system implementation to fail.
Why is this the case?
Years of personal experience (and other anecdotal stories from trusted and respected business associates) passively observing big names consultants and implementation experts leading and directing ‘crucial’ business system implementation change towards failure* shows that financial prowess has almost nothing to do with the success of a business system implementation.
In our opinion, failure is defined by critical business objectives not being met and the drastic lost of crucial financial data for business decision making. In other words, the more systems a company brings in and implements to improve financial transparency and assist in making business processes simpler, the less likely the company will have achieved its business objectives.
The inverse return on investment (ROI) is due to the neglect of considering the ‘human factor’ in each and every implementation project. What does the ‘human factor’ mean in this context? The ‘human factor’ covers everything from leadership of the company, the business system sponsor, the project manager leading the integration, the subject-matter experts providing the specifications for the system integration and ultimately the targeted end-users of the new business system.
Not spending enough time considering all aspects of the ‘human factor’ and ensuring quality of execution in all areas involving these ‘humans’ can lead to massive failures in implementation projects.