Teachers Give ERP Implementations Failing Grades

theodp writes "Nine months after the Los Angeles Unified School District launched SAP HR and Payroll as part of a larger $132M ERP rollout, LAUSD employees are still being overpaid, underpaid or going unpaid. In June, about 30,000 paychecks were issued with errors, falling somewhat short of the Mission Statement 'to effectively deliver services to meet the payroll needs of all District employees serving our students.' Meanwhile, a $17M PeopleSoft-based payroll implementation has been making life miserable for Chicago Public Schools teachers and staff since last April, including June retirees who were stiffed for more than $35M. It's been a bad computer year for CPS staff, who also had to contend with a new $60M system that wasn't up to the task of taking attendance."

Comments

Par for the course

[realmolo]

In my experience, this kind of thing is typical.

It's almost a rule that the more expensive the software, the more likely it is to really and truly SUCK.

It's also a rule that the bigger the company/organization/school district/whatever, the less likely it is that "technology" purchasing decisions are made by someone who actually HAS A CLUE about technology. The reason being, of course, that technology is too expensive to let the "tech" people get involved with the purchasing process.

Like I said, this is all par-for-the-course in the American corporate world. And school districts/government organizations are even WORSE.

Re:Par for the course

[alekd]

Neither SAP nor Peoplesoft suck. They might be expensive, complex, old-fashioned and suffer from having been around and tinkered with for a long time (especially true for SAP), but they do work and with them it is actually possible to implement a system with the required functionality that works in a reasonable amount of time. This is not something you could do with a custom-built system or any of the cheap COTS systems. The problem is typically not the technology, it is the convoluted and almost impossible to understand business rules in the payroll area. This is especially true in the public sector and in other places with heavy union involvement. Over time you get more and more complex rules for how to calculate pay. The end result is that nobody understands their pay slips anymore and it is nigh impossible to implement and test a system that handles all the exceptional cases. Still, they try and fail instead of simplifying the rules and use the money saved in consultant fees in a way that would actually benefit their employees.

Re:Par for the course

[ari{Dal}]

The price has nothing to do with it. Here's why software implementations fail:

- failure to scope the project correctly.
- scope creep, as everyone rushes to get their own stamp on the project.
- on the other side, scope reduction, once some pinhead in accounting realises how much the scope creep is costing.
- implementing for IT instead of the end user.
- allowing either IT or business sole authority in software purchase decisions. Either way it's a guaranteed disaster.
- instead of improving current processes, projects attempt to replace/revamp said processes completely, with little to no impact from the people who actually use them.
- lack of training. Nine times out of ten when a project runs over budget, the first area cut is the end user training.
- cheaping out on the implementation. I've watched companies spend millions on software licenses, then shortchange on the implementation.
- rushed implementation. Instead of planning and implementing on a schedule, the project managers fix a timeline and say "get it done in this timeframe", completely ignoring how long it SHOULD take.

I could add more, but this is just part of it.

Re:Par for the course

[antarctican]

Oh hang on... theres "consulting costs" involved... Thats where SAP/PS "certified" consultants come in to "customise" the software... In that case its probably 100 family cars worth.

Oh don't get me started.... I have experience with both PeopleSoft and SAP, and I am not impressed by either.

My employer has implemented PeopleSoft and it's been nothing but a nightmare. Inaccurate accounts, never quote being sure how much money you have in an account, and the web interface.... It's like something out of 1997! This is 2007, and if Google and other companies can make sleek AJAX interfaces, you'd think on a multi-million dollar system like PeopleSoft they could at least build one that looks as though it's from this decade!

As for SAP, I administer a SAP system for a friend's company, we're talking a company of about $1-2 million in sales a year. And as I learn more about this system, I shake my head more in disbelief. I've spent weekends having to rebuild new laptops they've bought with XP because the software simply doesn't work under Vista, and the estimated compatibility date we keep getting is 1 year+. You might say that's Vista's fault, and to a degree it is, however when I learn about how their authentication works, and how it depends on Vista's authentication for their client-server model, plus their own internal authentication I wonder how these people ever got their CS degrees. The clients access MS SQL DIRECTLY, not through a nice integrity maintaining server process. That is such a huge no-no if you want good audit trails and data integrity, you do not let the clients directly access the database!

I often wonder, if I knew more about accounting, I bet I could put together a startup and make a piece of software which cleans their clocks. It is complex, but doable, without interfaces out of last century and authentication protocols which depend upon the eccentricities of different versions of an operating system. If someone took on this challenge they could be very, very, very rich just by building a usable system that doesn't require millions in consulting fees.

And yes, those SAP consultants, I can see my friend's blood pressure go up whenever I tell him he have to call them for assistance on some arcane matter which is far overly complex for what is trying to be accomplished. I guess the easier way to become very rich is to be a SAP/PeopleSoft consultant, if you can swallow your morals.

Re:Par for the course

[_Sharp'r_]

Typical government/large corporate software project steps:
1. Have a manager in a government bureacracy or at a director-level that the vendor takes out for "business" golf make the decision.
2. Ensure that manager has no repercussions for his decision and probably isn't even in the same position when the project is supposed to go live.
3. Have the vendor, with no knowledge of the existing system, come up with a timeline to replace it with their stuff, but "customized".
4. Pay vendor millions in licensing fees. Golf has a very good ROI for big vendors.
5. Pay vendor millions more to supply a few brand new employees who took the vendor's "class" on his product to "customize" it for you, thus making those employees valuable enough to get something of a real job working for someone else later.
6. When the first few milestones are missed, have the vendor add a couple of people to the project that know even less than the original consultants.
7. When things start go even slower, begin to blame the "extra" work that wasn't ever planned for to start with, but is critical to the project.
8. To make up time, cut out any originally required user training.
9. To make up more time, cut out all documentation efforts.
10. To make up more time, cut out all quality assurance efforts and related paperwork.
11. To save time, skip development and testing environments and deploy everything straight to production servers.
12. Switch over to the new system, even though it's not done, hasn't been tested, and no one knows how to use it.
13. Sign a long-term consulting contract with the vendor to pay them for keeping the original consultants on doing "maintenance" for the forseeable future, hoping something will eventually work.
14. Ignore your own staff's original predictions and recommendations and complain about how no one could have predicted that this project could possibbly fail, since the vendor is the "industry leader".
15. ????
16. If you're the vendor, "Profit!!!!" . If you're the original manager, put "Successfully led a $50,000,000 software project" on your resume.

Re:Par for the course

[DarkOx]

I realize that SAP is complex, and that payroll is complex. You apparently don't realize that at all. I have spent most of my short career working with ERP systems or doing work very tightly coupled to ERP systems like activity based costing. If you every start doing that sort of work and talk to business folk behind it you will be amazed at how often you find yourself saying "You must be kidding" when they start explaining all the rules and exceptional cases to you. Then you run in to the legacy issues, and how the old system they used in the eighties stored time in 27ths of a second and for that reason you have if not store at least present data that way because those of the numbers the desk workers are used to seeing and it has the tie out with the data wharehouse which has always be loaded that way.

Oh and payroll is something you can't get wrong. Quite possibly more so then any other business function has to be right the first time. Fixing mistakes is hard and extreemly costly, and that is before any legal exposure is considered. You will also find your self working with the group of business people who are the least trusting, and first to loose confidence, for very good reasons.

If you think ERP is anything like a database and some spread sheets you have never been close to ERP. I admint its not climate modeling, or interstellar navigation but its not simple.

Happening elsewhere too

[mrbill1234]

http://csueu9.blogspot.com/2007/08/peoplesoft-no-pay-for-arizona-state.html

"The move to PeopleSoft at Arizona State has left hundreds of employees high and dry with smaller or empty paychecks. Employees are bouncing checks and having to scramble for loans to pay bills."

Too much modularity!

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the main problems facing these ERP systems is that they try to be far too generic. Site-specific functionality is jammed into the overall framework in the form of modules. Unfortunately, business logic is often very complex, and so it doesn't always fit well into these modules. This can lead directly to hackish attempts to circumvent the limitations imposed by the ERP modules system, which often leads directly to faulty software.

Another problem affecting lower-end ERP solutions is the use of data abstraction layers like Hibernate. These layers separate the application developers from the databases that are actually storing the data being manipulated by the ERP system. Since the developers tend to now avoid writing SQL statements, they lose sight of the real relationships between the data stored within the database tables. Losing sight of these relationships means that the developers often take obtuse, roundabout ways to getting to data through the data abstraction layer, when the same data could be obtained in a few lines of SQL.

Ah, yes... Peoplesoft

[starseeker]

My undergrad college rolled out a Peoplesoft based system with (IIRC) the objective of avoiding having to deal with fixing the old mainframe based setup. After a very large amount of money (which included fixing the old system anyway since the new system wasn't ready in time) we got a new system that (at least from the student side) was less attractive than the old one. I don't know all that much about the admin/teaching sides of things, but from what I saw Postgresql + PHP + better initial design considerations + a few good coders would have done wonders for a fraction of the $$. At that time we also had wind of other schools having similar trouble with Peoplesoft.

Perhaps the system got better over time, but I can't help wondering why Peoplesoft is so dominant in such situations - do people have better experiences with them they can report? My experience with it was admittedly very light (in the form of rather useless and highly non-intuitive grade reports) but if that was a sample of their standard work quality the market should be begging for competition.

I'd argue that

[HangingChad]

Neither SAP nor Peoplesoft suck.

Suck is sort of a generic term but when it comes to specific customer installations go I've never seen one go smoothly...ever. Never seen one come in on budget, either. The best thing I can say for either one of them is they're better than Seibel.

I have seen the reps leapfrog over the technical department to pitch the executives, glossing over the implementation and cost issues. Seen them give out customer testimonials that didn't hold up to investigation, low ball hardware requirements and suggest that the IT people were well-meaning but out of their depth.

I also disagree that it's something that couldn't be custom built for less money and deliver longer and more reliable service. Now if you mean having EDS or Dell Consulting build it for you then, yes, you're completely correct in that context.

Peoplesoft is a steaming pile of crap

[myc]

I don't know much about the innards of Peoplesoft, but speaking as a faculty end user, it is a steaming pile of crap. The current implementation of Peoplesoft running across all 23 campuses of the California State University system is estimated to have cost over $700 million at this point.

Just as one example, this fall students were being booted out of classes they legitimately enrolled in, because the financial aid module could not talk to the enrollment module properly, leading the system to think that these students did not pay tuition. Our department office spent the better part of the last 3 weeks manually re-enrolling everyone.

There is a state auditor's report on the CSU selection and implementation of Peoplesoft, which began back in 1997 (too lazy to link to it but Google will find you the .pdf). After skimming through it, I couldn't believe that no CSU executives were not indicted on insider trading and corruption charges.

LAUSD problems

[msaavedra]

My wife is a teacher in LAUSD. Her paycheck has been screwed up on a number of occasions. She no longer knows how much she is supposed to be paid, because her salary is now different every month. The worst case was when the district deposited her check (direct deposit into the checking account), then withdrew every penny of it the next day with no warning. Why did they do this? No one has been able to explain it. The following day, they deposited the exact same amount back into the account. Even when we have the money in the account now, we feel like we can't touch it.

Since this has affected us personally, and since I'm an I.T. professional, I've been following this pretty closely. Here is some more information that wasn't talked about in the article:

• David Brewer, the LAUSD superintendent, has no experience in education. As far as I can tell, he has little experience in business too. He was a career military man, and probably is used to things like the fabled $600 toilet seat, $300 screw drivers, etc. To be fair, the problems started before he took office, but he has been woefully unable to deal with this situation. To make matters worse, despite his inexperience, he makes even more money than the last superintendent.
• There is suspicion of corruption in the contracting process. Deloitte, the company who got the job, were not able to get this contract legally, because they were too expensive. Someone in the district hired a lobbyist who got our state legislature to pass a law changing this. The day after the law changed, Deloitte was hired. Through an amazing coincidence, the aformentioned lobbyist is also employed by Deloitte. I think that as things progress, we'll find people in the district with other ties to Deloitte.
• The last contract negotiations between the teachers union and the district was very ugly. The union hired a real firebrand to negotiotiate, there was nearly a strike, lots of inflammatory stuff was said in the media, and lots of bad blood was created. Eventually the district was forced to give in to most of the union demands. I wouldn't be surprised if the district is dragging their heels on getting this fixed simply out of spite.
• Aside from that, the slowness also seems due to everyone going into CYA mode, probably because there is plenty of blame to assign to all parties involved. I suspect that when everything comes out, we'll see that not only was Deloitte incompetent in managing this project, but also that the district did not give proper specifications of what they needed. After all, the important part for Deloitte and their cronies in the district (the part that needed lots of thought, effort, and creativity) was figuring out how extract as much money from the taxpayers as possible. As for the actual project, who cares?