BSkyB Wins £709m Lawsuit Against HP-EDS

E5Rebel writes "In a massive legal case in the UK, HP-EDS has been found guilty of 'fraudulent misrepresentation' by their sales team when winning a major CRM project. Settlement could cost £200M out of an initial claim for £700M. HP's only relief was that parts of the claim were dismissed, but the core claim was upheld. HP is likely to appeal. Outsourcing will never be the same again. HP workers have been on strike against pay cuts last week; no doubt management will try and screw them further to pay for this debacle."

Comments

Outsourcing suxors, but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

AC disclosure: I work for BSKYB, but not in CRM ... thank f**k.

Yes, the CRM system has problems, and from a tech perspective I'd agree that it's not worth £48M (OMFG!). However, I think it's amazing that things got this far. If we're in a capitalist society then I also want this to be a meritocracy and I want someone in Sky to publicly take the blame for this 3rd party POS. Regardless of the internal or external software teams, it should never be allowed to degenerate to this level of incompetence.

Re:SAP

[BlueBoxSW.com]

There was a slashdot article awhile back about an SAP implementation at Waste Management that went bad.

Similar situation to this one.

I really think large companies buying these systems are going to start recording the sales presentations, burn them to DVD, and insist on including them in the contract.

That way the sales representations BECOME part of the whole agreement, and are actionable.

If EDS has to tell the truth it is dead.

[HornWumpus]

Has anybody ever heard of (or better yet been involved with) an EDS project that went well.

Anyone?

EDS is characterized by: lots of promises, no delivery, never saw the experts present during negotiations again, lots of low GPA recent college grads doing 'work' they are not qualified for.

I don't know how EDS stays in business. Kickbacks to purchasing officers with no stake in the projects is my guess.

Re:If EDS has to tell the truth it is dead.

[rocker_wannabe]

Apparently you are not familiar with the Navy NMCI Contract with EDS. I haven't been following it lately (as in the last few years) but it had VERY overpriced systems on the contract and mostly hired people who didn't have much experience because they were cheap. That contract would keep even the worst managed company in gravy for quite a while. I don't know what most of the military guys thought about it but just ask any civilian employee for the Navy what they thought of NMCI and listen to the expletives fly.

I'm not sure how any company can sell computer software or services without lying, even unintentionally. Anything worth bidding on by EDS is going to be complicated enough to keep them from knowing what they really have for a month at least.

The worst part is if you're going to expect technology salesmen to tell the truth then you're going to eliminate at lot of material for the Dilbert comic strip, among others.