Packaged software implementations can go extremely well, delivering excellent, even transformational, results. Other times… not so much. The speaker has seen enterprises of all types spend vast amounts of money selecting and implementing purchased software - US$3B in the most extreme case! And after all that expense, it simply doesn’t work, or works so poorly the organisation is worse off than before. When he’s called in to assist with “project recovery,” Alec finds the factors leading to these failures are surprisingly consistent, and almost always surprising. They also generally apply to bespoke solution development.

Come to this tutorial to learn the reasons behind many of these failures, and to share your experiences. It won’t be all doom and gloom – we’ll also look at factors contributing to extremely successful implementations. Everything will be backed up by practical techniques, tips, and guidelines, and examples from the speaker’s experience, including:

• How one of the world’s most admired companies spent $1B on an implementation and achieved worse performance.

• The case of the public institution that spent $80M configuring cloud-based HR and Payroll software, had nothing functional to show for it, and how the situation was resolved.

• On a brighter note, how a manufacturer applied the techniques we’ll discuss (including data modelling!) over the software vendor’s objections and became a global showcase account.

• Using business objects, events, and services to identify essential solution requirements.

• Why the end-to-end business process perspective is essential to ensuring the completeness of your user stories and functional requirements.

One-sentence description

Alec shares the surprising reasons packaged software selection and implementation often goes disastrously wrong, and how to avoid them.