Got a rule for that?
This article in Infoworld reports some research into why major software implementations go bad. Stories abound about "SAP pain"--that the pain inflicted by an ERP implementation was so great that any thoughts about changing vendors or a major upgrade are scuttled before they can even be articulated. Researchers say that too often either basic business processes and rules are not understood or cannot be changed easily. This lack of understanding lies directly at the root cause of major software implementation failure.
Quoth the operations manager at an insurance claims company who just implemented a new bill paying system, "We really had to change the way we think about things. It was a significant cultural change in our company to come to grips with: How do you identify the business requirements? How do you document them? How do you use them most effectively in an automated solution?"
Process engineers have surely thought these through when implementing automation projects for a machine or process. With the complexity of software implementation demanded by today's manufacturing management, we'd better be using the same thought processes when implementing the new MES application or integrating plant information systems.
This article was probably developed from a press release by the business process software vendor, since it was the only one mentioned. But that topic may be a good thing to search out to guide the business rules process.
Study: Companies struggle to capture business processes. When software projects go bad, the results can be disastrous. Every few months, a new horror story pops into the headlines -- like Hewlett-Packard Co.'s recent, flawed SAP deployment. The company had done dozens of smooth ERP (enterprise resource planning) migration projects, but when its latest ran into problems, the cascading disruptions contributed to HP missing its third-quarter financial projections. [InfoWorld: Top News]
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