August 11, 2011 from Computerworld – “Epicor is being sued by one of its customers over an ERP (enterprise resource planning) project that allegedly racked up five times its expected implementation costs, in the latest dispute of this type to become public…
The implementation costs were supposed to be US$190,000 but have reached more than $1 million, the complaint says. Whaley is suing Epicor for fraud, breach of contract, unfair trade and negligent misrepresentation. It wants its money returned along with additional money for damages…”
180 View – Unfortunately there are still failed ERP implementations. We believe that the problem is primarily people and not software. There is something seriously wrong with overruns of this magnitude. But overruns are avoidable. When there are unknowns and the implementer is unable to provide a firm price, we recommend that they be paid a fee to nail down the costs and prepare a project plan that includes the vendor’s time as well as the client.