I read with great interest your articles 'Three reasons why IT projects fail to deliver' and 'Why have too few firms made a success of CRM?' (Computing, 20 May).
Increasingly, corporate and government IT projects (particularly CRM initiatives) are failing to meet expectations, are late or fail to deliver against budget. As correctly pointed out by Peter Sommer, this is often caused when unsuspecting IT departments and business users purchase packages which do not meet the genuine needs of the business.
This is compounded by the drive to automate inefficient business processes simply to make them quicker.
All too often this results in massive amounts of frantic customisation activity (such as coding) to make ill-fitting packages support potentially flawed business processes.
What is needed is an approach to implementing off-the-shelf software packages which recognises that, although vendors may claim their product will meet all the requirements of a business, in fact this is rarely the case. A method is also needed whereby any mis-matches between software capability and business requirements can be addressed through implementing business change, rather than through a technical solution.
There are three steps to achieving this. First, the customer must take time to completely understand the capabilities of the package. This may be difficult and often requires the support of vendor-neutral, technology-independent consultants. It is important to see through vendor hype and identify early on which business requirements can be satisfied by the capabilities of the product and which cannot.
Second, a cost benefit analysis needs to be carried out wherever a gap exists between business need and package capability. Cost savings can be made by re-engineering key business processes rather than trying to solve problems by applying new technology.
Finally the aim is to 'configure' the package around the edges rather than engage in expensive customisation.
By implementing packages in this fashion and by fostering a strong business change culture within the organisation, it is possible to avoid the most common pitfalls associated with many CRM and other system integration projects.
