Top 10 ERP Failures:

  • Hershey
  • PROBLEMS/ISSUES: In September of 1999, the company was having problems with its new order-taking and distribution computer system. The problem kept Hershey from delivering $100 million worth of Kisses and Jolly Ranchers for Halloween that year. As a result, Hershey Foods’ stock price fell by 8%. Although luckily it didn’t, investors were concerned that the failed software implementation could result in the breaking up of the Fortune 500 company.
  • CAUSE FOR FAILURE: The major cause of Hershey’s failed implementation was timing. The system went live right about the time when orders were pouring in for Halloween, and they couldn’t be fulfilled.
  • TAKEAWAY: This case is important because it not only highlights how complex large scale ERP projects can be, but also shows that companies must make smart choices about when they choose to go-live with their new ERP systems (ex. not before a busy sales period as Hershey did)
  • Nike
    • P
  • US Air Force
  • NYC CityTime
  • HP
  • Waste Management
  • UK NHS
  • Avon
  • Hewlett Packard
  • PROBLEMS/ISSUES: This occurred in 2004. It was a disastrous attempt at an implementation of multiple enterprise systems across their many offices.
    • CAUSE: This was caused by an accumulation of lots of smaller problems. As they attempted to transition a region into a simplified group of ERP applications, they found that communication between both teams and software broke down. The failed project cost HP over $160 million.
    • TAKEAWAY: Plan for problems, and plan for the fact that system failures can interact and make the others even more impactful on your implementation. HP was clearly not prepared to deal with such a buildup of problems along with increased demand for their products in that time frame.
  • FoxMeyer Drug

Each will be followed by:

  • the problems/issues that occurred during the implementation
  • the cause for failure,
  • the big takeaway on how to avoid an implementation failure like this