Oregon City Government SAP Implementation Goes Awry
The city government of Portland, Oregon, says its SAP implementation went badly awry due to planning and project leadership problems, resulting in skyrocketing costs and a protracted time line. As reported on PC World, the project to replace Portland’s existing software with SAP started with a planning phase in 2004 and was originally budgeted at US$14 million. While the project has achieved its primary goal the implementation ended up costing more than $47 million.
“Indeed, the relationship between SAP and Portland appears sound. City officials participated in an SAP case study on the project, and also put out a press release last year extolling the new system’s initial benefits.
“Instead, the report points to inadequacies on the part of city officials and the project’s initial systems integrator.
“For example, city officials had based the original budget on an independent estimate that did not factor in costs such as new hardware needed to run the system. In addition, city officials later added more functionality to the project plan.”
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