ChainLink Research

Frontline Solutions, Feb, 2004

Despite some highly publicized project failures in recent years and complaints about cost and implementation times, new research suggests that most companies are satisfied with their advanced planning systems and supply chain software.

A report from ChainLink Research found that more than 80% of buyers are ultimately satisfied with their software, and more than 57% purchased additional products from the same vendor.

In the past two years, both the number of implementations of supply chain software and the length of implementation have declined. Transportation management systems typically took longer to implement than demand planning, production planning or supply chain planning systems.

Delayed or failed projects shared several common elements, including software firms selling undeveloped products, mismatches between software and business models, high-risk business process changes that were expected to be enabled by the software, changes in project teams, late delivery of key resources by the vendor, software companies pushing unwanted or unneeded modules and lack of experienced integration personnel.

"But beyond this, there was a general lack of attention all around," says the report. "In the current market, vendors have redoubled their efforts--fewer projects and more attention to their customers."

Other findings included:

* Responsibility for project issues and failures was evenly shared among vendors, consultants and users who failed to change business processes to improve technology performance.

* There is no standard implementation. Each project has unique processes, technology environments and organizational constraints.

* Project failure statistics reported in the year 2000 are over with. The high-profile stories don't represent the norm.

* Software firms now play a greater role in projects--systems integrators aren't solely managing projects.

* Best-of-breed vendors continue to create differentiated value for supply chain users by delivering more advanced processes.

www.chainlinkresearch.com