June 10, 2004
You Would Think Stanford, Of All Places, Could Get ERP Right
As an alum of its law school, Stanford's extraordinary difficulties moving from a 20+-year old mainframe system to Oracle and PeopleSoft, as recounted in this Baseline article, give me great pain. Admittedly, Stanford was trying to take products that live and breathe in the land of public, for-profit companies and hammer them into place in a private, non-profit multiversity, with utterly different metrics for performance, evaluation, and decision-making, but Stanford's CIO still has the best line:
"Sometimes I look back and wonder whether this wave of ERP software...wasn't a collective hallucination."With all of its insider access to Oracle (three Stanford professors sit on the Oracle board, and Larry Ellison has donated $10-million to Stanford), you would think if any university could get it right, it would be Stanford. The moral of the story? If you're contemplating, or already in the midst of, a firm-wide "enterprise software" upgrade:
- communicate, communicate, communicate;
- don't let the software vendor double as a consultant on the project;
- start with a round peg for your round hole.
Posted by Bruce at June 10, 2004 4:24 PM | TrackBack
Posted to Finance | IT Printer-friendly version
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)
"Adam Smith, Esq. is, and will remain, the definitive
voice on law firm strategy."
—David
Jabbari, Global Head of Know-How, Allen & Overy
"I just don't know what the profession would do without you."
—Chairman, AmLaw 25 firm
“Constantly stunning.’—Managing Partner
"I read three things: The Wall Street Journal, The Economist,
and Adam Smith, Esq.—and I tell my partners to do the same."
—Managing Partner, AmLaw 50 firm
“You have a fascinating niche which you cover ever so much better than
does the conventional legal press.”
—Walter Olson of Overlawyered
“Required reading: Amazing.”—Venture Capitalist
"You're the brand name in law firm economics. There is no one out
there—repeat, no one—who covers this business better, or thinks about
it more creatively, than you. I tell people this guy is really, really good."
—Chair/Managing Partner, AmLaw 50 firm
Business Pundit
CorporateCounsel.Net Blog
Conglomerate
BusFilm by Larry Ribstein
Business Pundit
Carnival of the Capitalists
Chicago Boyz
Ensight
Marginal Revolution
Ronald Coase Institute
Stephen Bainbridge
"Adam Smith, Esq.,"® an inquiry into the economics of law firms, and the maroon banner, are a federally registered trademark belonging to Adam Smith, Esq., LLC, which is partially owned and controlled by Bruce MacEwen.
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
