Sage News and Discussion

Some stories about evolution of Atlas at Sage (and how your current woes had been in unintentional planning for awhile): 1. Factoid: The original project manager of the Sage's SAP implementation by Deloitte Consulting was a former boss of mine and he came up with the phrase Project Atlas, which is in direct reference to Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged. He's a full-on objectivist and Rand disciple. Too bad they used Atlas as the live product name. 2. What was supposed to be a 2 yr implementation of Atlas turned into 4 years (as of 2009) and shortly thereafter it starting rolling out to some Sage campuses. The cost overrun in meantime was staggering and clearly not budgeted for. The product you have in the end is klunky, not user friendly, slower, requires more steps. This is even more true for the Sage employees in Sales and Support who have to use it. Some of this had to do with Deloitte themselves (who apparently has a rap sheet) and their team of ""brainy-acks"", how they carried around the original project specs like a Bible ready to quote verses to avoid changes and improvements, their many delays, and how they played the blame game. Also the product itself (SAP) was klunky and whether you looked at it from Sales or Support perspective there were square pegs in round holes everywhere. Every request to make it more user friendly added more costs. Also no one at Sage truly had any idea of how customized all the current CRM systems in use were when you looked at all the campuses. Remember every campus in North America was an acquisition and they were all using their own disparate systems. Over the years the number of CRM mods on those systems grew and grew and many weren't documented well and all this came out as a surprise AFTER the initial Deloitte project spec'ing (you know this story well with your own clients). Naturally this contributed to lots of change orders. Also it was to easy to see when we saw alpha versions it was so not the right fit (SAP itself without consideration to Deloitte ), not the right product and there was still a sh-load of money to still be spent. But too much money had been sunk already to pull the plug. It's a case study of poor enterprise planning and lack of cost controls: * Rushing to find the singular solution to replace all the disparate systems (my guess is a performance bonus was tied to a due date on this just like it was when the bad fit pre-Atlas Knowledge Base for MAS 90 and 500 was rolled out) * Poor assessment and research of SAP as the right enterprise solution * A deceptive implementation partner * Surprise of how many customized and disjointed existing systems there were and ergo project underbudgeted to deal with BTW here are some other Deloitte SAP projects with stories similar to Sage: http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/03/12/44615.htm http://goo.gl/NrVGS My opinion - Last thing - the 1st live roll-out of Atlas was in 2009 coincided with timing of largest labor force reduction --> cost recovery .. I'm just saying

I am curious exactly how much the implementation cost truly is so far.

I almost think they could have gotten a better system by paying college students to collaborate and come up with a custom system.

Personally, they should have had Shaver give them a Value Billed installation........

Is it too late to revert to the previous system?

Monday morning (before 8:00 AM) ordered an additional SMI Report Manager license. No luck through today, because: ""We have an error in our system that is preventing me from putting in this order. I alerted our IS department about it and hopefully they'll have it fixed soon."" I am wondering what ""soon"" may mean.

To Alnoor's point, even the Sage employees are suffering. Is that any consolation for us? Not really except for the ""Nyah.. nyah.. nyah, nyah.. nyah!"" aspect.

Problem is the best of the Sage employees will leave out of frustration, and the level of service will drop another notch.

It doesn't help that there was a revolving door (which continues today) of executive leadership. Some portions of the IT project were inherited by the existing leaders. And I'm sure those who come after them will also look forward to a similar inheritance. The current Atlas system has the look and feel of one where the system has been declared ""done"" and now it's time to live within the capabilities.

Would Sage have paid the money (millions) up front to have a proof of concept analysis??? With the turnover of senior execs, there is no project ownership. Pay the bonuses and exit through the revolving door.

Thanks for the insights @AlnoorCassim. It's always interesting to see how the trains go off the rails. I'm thinking a new reality TV show ""The Real Implementation Projects of SAP""?

Ha

Reality TV hits a new low.

More like ""Implementation Nightmares with Douglas Ramsey"". Only instead of fixing the issues Ramsey sits weeping in the corner of the room.

Reading about the North Korean rocket launch today, it sounded like the Atlas project: ""All indications are that it failed.

You mean that wasn't phase 2 of Atlas? I thought it was.

Or maybe it was stage 2 and we haven't yet reached orbit where Sage management happens to be. (Insert Uranus jokes here.)

Which reminds me of one of my wife's favorite techno songs. Imagine my 8 year old and 5 year old singing in harmony about ""we're going to Uranus"". Sigh! Almost as bad as my 5 year old singing ""Money, Money, Money!"" by Abba in the car yesterday out of the blue. He was parodying it by singing ""Nummy, Nummy, Nummy!"" about food, but still...

I'm guessing it was better than some of those on American Idol this year.

Well, we were laughing our asses off as my wife was trying to figure out when he heard the Abba song. The answer was she was playing it in the car last month once.

Mamma Mia! Incredibly, Abba is the second best selling music group in history behind The Beatles, so it's almost impossible to avoid them.

At least he wasn't singing lmfao I'm sexy and I know it Sent from my iPad HD On Apr 13, 2012, at 3:28 PM, ""John Hoyt"" <share@socialcast.com<mailto:share@socialcast.com>> wrote:

No @MarkChinsky that was last week.

I think my wife was afraid I'd let him watch Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Mostly because of the ping pong ball scene.

@RobertWood Do you have a special place in your brain to remember ""classic"" movie scenes like that? You actually caused me to take time from my busy schedule to watch it on Youtube. LOL!

Can't help but wonder if Atlas will ever be fully functional.

I hate to see you worry about something like that Wayne so please allow me to put your mind at ease: it will never be perfected.

I don't think perfection is even an objective. It would be nice to say that it was close to the versitility of the old system, but that is a pipe dream also. Original goals will continue to be shortened so that victory can be declared at some point. It big, bulky and unwieldy. People will be forced to develop their own data silos and work arounds so that they can appear to be efficient. Tis a VERY dark chapter in the Sage saga. Doubly embarrassing because Sage is a holding company selling software solutions to enhance the wealth of its shareholders. I would think they would be experts in this..

It should at least convince Sage management that they are incapable of doing direct implementations...holding my breath I am NOT!

4/15/1912 - the sinking of the Titanic - another British disaster.

@JeffSchwenk Sage is experts in , well, creating holding companies that grow through acquisition. I'm not so sure they're skilled in organic growth.

Well said!