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Comment by drumhead | Hacker News Reader

If it's not a fail with Oracle, it's SAP or dynamics or some other "ERP". Do these implementations ever work, and why do these big organisations keep going for them?surely they've seen the string of failures preceding them? I suspect it's ego, and the need to pad CVs that does it. And the unwillingness of the people who should know better to say no.

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SAP S4/HANA was insanely expensive but generally worked, and on time.

Finding consultants who could help was like pulling teeth, though. The offshored Indian ones were terrible, and the European ones often didn't speak English well enough. Mexico City was had good offshoring options but couldn't supply enough bodies.

Never had a strictly Oracle project go well though. Exadata is a dirty word in these parts. Only thing that was more of a PITA was Azure...

Yes, they do work and sometimes pretty good. It mostly depends on the implementation team. SAP which is the one I know, has plenty of defects but also a lot of virtues. A good implementation and customizing team can make it run properly.

Most implementations do "work" to the extent that they are better than nothing. I mean what's the alternative? Running business processes on paper is no longer a practical option. And most enterprises lack the scale and competence that would be needed to build their own custom ERP in a cost effective way.

They "work" just fine for Oracle, SAP, etc.

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