How I lost an ERP tender in a large company
I want to tell one very instructive story. Like sore pride and unhealthy ambitions, common sense will prevail.
We in the company generally have an unwritten rule - we do not work with individuals and with government bodies. Now here I think, whether to include in this list and large companies.
There is a certain large well-known company, two thousand people work. Engaged in large IT projects, project deliveries “on demand” of servers and equipment, etc. In short, one of the largest system integrators in the Russian market.
And so, they decided to introduce an ERP system for themselves.
Came to them, as one of the tops, a man from another similar company. But there he was used to working within a clear, automated system, where everything is clear - orders, invoices, bills, receipts, payments, etc. They themselves wrote this program there for about fifteen years. And here he comes to this company and falls into utter chaos and mess. All accounting is on paper, automation is zero, where are the deliveries, why the hell can you find, and where are the deliveries there are thousands ... Can you imagine how a person feels in such a situation? He's just in shock.
')
Of course, he came to the leadership and said that it was impossible to work like this and something needs to be done, otherwise this chaos will sooner or later end us. “Well, that’s great,” says the boss, “You hold the cards. Organize a tender, choose a product. ” He was delighted that the issue was so successfully resolved, he is a competent, decisive person, he introduced erp, he knows exactly what he wants and how to achieve it. In short, he began to conduct a tender.
A set of participants is almost standard. Axapta, galaxy, rock, 1c8 and our modest product (someone else probably was, but I do not remember). It all started in May-April 2008.
In September 2008, the turn came to us. We were the last in the tender. He came to us, sat all day, studied the product, after which he said that everything was clear to him and that he had found what he was looking for.
The next step is the visit to us of their deputy director for automation. Also sat and watched. Hmm, everything is fine, everything works, and as it should. And this man is also not simple, he even implemented SAP R3.
They both go to the management, they report that everything is fine, they have found a solution that by 70-80% satisfies the tasks set now, even in the basic version. After that, one of the owners already wished to personally go to several of my clients and see everything with their own eyes. We go to three places, we meet with directors. And in all three places, the directors themselves work in the program and really manage everything. Everything is good.
Now another owner (another) has already wanted to meet me personally. We meet, we communicate. At the end of the meeting, he says that he is satisfied with the result.
The company takes on the work of a technical specialist under our project to deal directly with the settings, implementation there and all that. Literate uncle, 55 years old, with serious experience behind him, not a boy. In general, I realized that the guys are heading for the project and everything should be in order.
Several meetings and the decision was made in our favor. We work. We start with the development of TK. The project is status, responsible, and therefore I develop the TZ myself, and do not give it into the hands of our specialist. We get 50% prepayment. Two months later, the TK is ready. And this is where the fun begins.
TK wrote. Well, the company itself is such that where in order to at least agree on something, you need to go through all the circles of hell, i.e. it is necessary that this TZ be coordinated by all the leading managers of the company, although it was written, in fact, with their words. It is clear that no one there even wanted to watch this TK, because “I don’t understand anything about it.” And, therefore, they simply preferred not to sign it, but to dynamite, in order not to bear responsibility. So walkers walked, trying to sign something.
The last coordinator was (more precisely, was) the technical director. And this circumstance seemed to hurt her very much. Well, how? After all, ERP-systems are installed on computers? And who is responsible for computers? Praaaavilno. In short, whether she was seriously offended that the latter agrees, or decided to just “give a cool one”, such as in ERP she understands me better (although she has never implemented or even seen it in her life), or some ambitions leaped from her. In short, she decided to "show herself."
We organized a meeting with her. She invited a certain specialist there who knew about Oracle. He really understands, but in a slightly different area. The fact is that they are also engaged in automation, but different. In particular, they make billing systems. If I'm not mistaken, they introduced billing in Beeline. But to compare this with ERP is not that difficult, but generally impossible. And this person at the meeting asked the question: “Do you use partitioning tables?”. Apparently they themselves do not know how to do without it, and, accordingly, use it.
Partitioning is one of the ways to improve system performance when there is just a huge number of records in the tables. Yes, it gives a certain increase in speed, but only in certain situations, but the whole car adds problems. I said that we used this last time in 2000, still in the company of the CF, and even then, they refused because they learned how to do everything without partitioning. And already in Euroset, where we made a system of accounting for customer payments, we didn’t even remember about it. Although there were tables just huge.
In short, she clung to this partitioning. I say “listen, there’s a combat project for our client, where you yourself went and looked. There is a 200GB base there, you will never have such a large base, simply because of the specifics of the business. What did you do to me with this stupidity? ”It didn’t work. She went to one and the owners and said that "they even have no partisation."
It reminded me of a joke about a peasant who went to UAZ all his life (and there is a manual starter, such a curved piece of iron). And then he came to buy a foreign car, where this starter, of course, is not. After going to the car dealership, I came to the peasants in the garage and told Hochma, about the fact that this city ... but there is no manual starter. Why, he says, buy such a car?
In general, we did not receive the second half of the money for the TZ. Because management suspected that some “wrong” program had won the tender. Well, since she has no manual starter ...
Project suspended. The previous project manager (which SAP R3 implemented, even repeatedly) was removed from the project and appointed Madame (Technical Director) as the manager. But since she achieved her goal, the project failed, then, without further ado, hired a deputy to work for herself, upon which she laid all the worries in this regard. This deputy, by the way, also never participated in similar projects, in any incarnation. I whacked.
This "deputy" invited me to a meeting. And he says: "Alexander, I have to re-conduct the tender." Well, again, so again. He says I need two weeks to formulate the requirements. No problem, I say, articulate. Two weeks go by and that TOP is ringing me, and the first two minutes can't stop laughing. Then he calmed down and tells. It turns out that this “deputy” also hired someone there to formulate these very requirements. It is understandable, neither boom-boom itself. He, then, suffered two weeks and, nevertheless, formulated. This "deputy" comes to the TOP with these requirements and flaunts that, well, they say, how to prepare for tenders. Requirements, you understand, it is necessary to formulate.
Well, he asked for requirements for acquaintance, and they started there, it means to understand them. Stumbled into the list of requirements for such a term as "logistic slice". Give, thinks, see what it is. I typed in Yandex and got not somewhere, but on my website, on one of my articles, where I actually formulate a certain, in my opinion, correct list of requirements for ERP, where I use this term. He looks, then, into the monitor and cannot find 10 differences of my article and the two-week works of the “new team”.
It turned out that this “deputy” did not even look at this list and did not ask where he came from. Because if I had taken an interest, I would have learned that the author of this list is none other than me. The one with whom she met exactly two weeks ago. And this “specialist” she hired, apparently, was chopped into a toy on a computer for a couple of weeks, and then “all in sweat” presented her with such a significant result of her labors.
I don’t know that there the technical director still “sang” about me, but in short, we were not even taken to the new tender. And according to the requirements that I developed, I chose other software products.
New tender won aksapta. Probably because she said that "there is partitioning." And the rest is not so important.
For the past year they have been trying to start introducing it. Everything happens according to an almost classical pattern. This is when a consultant comes to you and does not advise you, but on the contrary, you advise him. He listens to you carefully, and then bills you for man-hours. Drug business is resting.
I spent almost a year on this project. It's a lot. And insulting.
And for those who plan to participate in such projects, I want to say - guys, in such large companies it’s much more important not the essence of the matter, but the correct policy and consideration of clan forces. The main thing is to know who has what influence on whom and with whom and in what sequence everything should be coordinated. And how good is what exactly you offer , the value is not very big.
We in the company generally have an unwritten rule - we do not work with individuals and with government bodies. Now here I think, whether to include in this list and large companies.
There is a certain large well-known company, two thousand people work. Engaged in large IT projects, project deliveries “on demand” of servers and equipment, etc. In short, one of the largest system integrators in the Russian market.
And so, they decided to introduce an ERP system for themselves.
How it all began
Came to them, as one of the tops, a man from another similar company. But there he was used to working within a clear, automated system, where everything is clear - orders, invoices, bills, receipts, payments, etc. They themselves wrote this program there for about fifteen years. And here he comes to this company and falls into utter chaos and mess. All accounting is on paper, automation is zero, where are the deliveries, why the hell can you find, and where are the deliveries there are thousands ... Can you imagine how a person feels in such a situation? He's just in shock.
')
Of course, he came to the leadership and said that it was impossible to work like this and something needs to be done, otherwise this chaos will sooner or later end us. “Well, that’s great,” says the boss, “You hold the cards. Organize a tender, choose a product. ” He was delighted that the issue was so successfully resolved, he is a competent, decisive person, he introduced erp, he knows exactly what he wants and how to achieve it. In short, he began to conduct a tender.
A set of participants is almost standard. Axapta, galaxy, rock, 1c8 and our modest product (someone else probably was, but I do not remember). It all started in May-April 2008.
In September 2008, the turn came to us. We were the last in the tender. He came to us, sat all day, studied the product, after which he said that everything was clear to him and that he had found what he was looking for.
The next step is the visit to us of their deputy director for automation. Also sat and watched. Hmm, everything is fine, everything works, and as it should. And this man is also not simple, he even implemented SAP R3.
They both go to the management, they report that everything is fine, they have found a solution that by 70-80% satisfies the tasks set now, even in the basic version. After that, one of the owners already wished to personally go to several of my clients and see everything with their own eyes. We go to three places, we meet with directors. And in all three places, the directors themselves work in the program and really manage everything. Everything is good.
Now another owner (another) has already wanted to meet me personally. We meet, we communicate. At the end of the meeting, he says that he is satisfied with the result.
The company takes on the work of a technical specialist under our project to deal directly with the settings, implementation there and all that. Literate uncle, 55 years old, with serious experience behind him, not a boy. In general, I realized that the guys are heading for the project and everything should be in order.
Several meetings and the decision was made in our favor. We work. We start with the development of TK. The project is status, responsible, and therefore I develop the TZ myself, and do not give it into the hands of our specialist. We get 50% prepayment. Two months later, the TK is ready. And this is where the fun begins.
The most interesting
TK wrote. Well, the company itself is such that where in order to at least agree on something, you need to go through all the circles of hell, i.e. it is necessary that this TZ be coordinated by all the leading managers of the company, although it was written, in fact, with their words. It is clear that no one there even wanted to watch this TK, because “I don’t understand anything about it.” And, therefore, they simply preferred not to sign it, but to dynamite, in order not to bear responsibility. So walkers walked, trying to sign something.
The last coordinator was (more precisely, was) the technical director. And this circumstance seemed to hurt her very much. Well, how? After all, ERP-systems are installed on computers? And who is responsible for computers? Praaaavilno. In short, whether she was seriously offended that the latter agrees, or decided to just “give a cool one”, such as in ERP she understands me better (although she has never implemented or even seen it in her life), or some ambitions leaped from her. In short, she decided to "show herself."
We organized a meeting with her. She invited a certain specialist there who knew about Oracle. He really understands, but in a slightly different area. The fact is that they are also engaged in automation, but different. In particular, they make billing systems. If I'm not mistaken, they introduced billing in Beeline. But to compare this with ERP is not that difficult, but generally impossible. And this person at the meeting asked the question: “Do you use partitioning tables?”. Apparently they themselves do not know how to do without it, and, accordingly, use it.
Partitioning is one of the ways to improve system performance when there is just a huge number of records in the tables. Yes, it gives a certain increase in speed, but only in certain situations, but the whole car adds problems. I said that we used this last time in 2000, still in the company of the CF, and even then, they refused because they learned how to do everything without partitioning. And already in Euroset, where we made a system of accounting for customer payments, we didn’t even remember about it. Although there were tables just huge.
In short, she clung to this partitioning. I say “listen, there’s a combat project for our client, where you yourself went and looked. There is a 200GB base there, you will never have such a large base, simply because of the specifics of the business. What did you do to me with this stupidity? ”It didn’t work. She went to one and the owners and said that "they even have no partisation."
It reminded me of a joke about a peasant who went to UAZ all his life (and there is a manual starter, such a curved piece of iron). And then he came to buy a foreign car, where this starter, of course, is not. After going to the car dealership, I came to the peasants in the garage and told Hochma, about the fact that this city ... but there is no manual starter. Why, he says, buy such a car?
In general, we did not receive the second half of the money for the TZ. Because management suspected that some “wrong” program had won the tender. Well, since she has no manual starter ...
Project suspended. The previous project manager (which SAP R3 implemented, even repeatedly) was removed from the project and appointed Madame (Technical Director) as the manager. But since she achieved her goal, the project failed, then, without further ado, hired a deputy to work for herself, upon which she laid all the worries in this regard. This deputy, by the way, also never participated in similar projects, in any incarnation. I whacked.
This "deputy" invited me to a meeting. And he says: "Alexander, I have to re-conduct the tender." Well, again, so again. He says I need two weeks to formulate the requirements. No problem, I say, articulate. Two weeks go by and that TOP is ringing me, and the first two minutes can't stop laughing. Then he calmed down and tells. It turns out that this “deputy” also hired someone there to formulate these very requirements. It is understandable, neither boom-boom itself. He, then, suffered two weeks and, nevertheless, formulated. This "deputy" comes to the TOP with these requirements and flaunts that, well, they say, how to prepare for tenders. Requirements, you understand, it is necessary to formulate.
Well, he asked for requirements for acquaintance, and they started there, it means to understand them. Stumbled into the list of requirements for such a term as "logistic slice". Give, thinks, see what it is. I typed in Yandex and got not somewhere, but on my website, on one of my articles, where I actually formulate a certain, in my opinion, correct list of requirements for ERP, where I use this term. He looks, then, into the monitor and cannot find 10 differences of my article and the two-week works of the “new team”.
It turned out that this “deputy” did not even look at this list and did not ask where he came from. Because if I had taken an interest, I would have learned that the author of this list is none other than me. The one with whom she met exactly two weeks ago. And this “specialist” she hired, apparently, was chopped into a toy on a computer for a couple of weeks, and then “all in sweat” presented her with such a significant result of her labors.
I don’t know that there the technical director still “sang” about me, but in short, we were not even taken to the new tender. And according to the requirements that I developed, I chose other software products.
New tender won aksapta. Probably because she said that "there is partitioning." And the rest is not so important.
For the past year they have been trying to start introducing it. Everything happens according to an almost classical pattern. This is when a consultant comes to you and does not advise you, but on the contrary, you advise him. He listens to you carefully, and then bills you for man-hours. Drug business is resting.
I spent almost a year on this project. It's a lot. And insulting.
And for those who plan to participate in such projects, I want to say - guys, in such large companies it’s much more important not the essence of the matter, but the correct policy and consideration of clan forces. The main thing is to know who has what influence on whom and with whom and in what sequence everything should be coordinated. And how good is what exactly you offer , the value is not very big.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/91585/
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