I work for a small company of about 150 people and am the only developer, it manager, web developer, telecommunications analyst, code monkey, etc etc.
We have purchased GreatPlains financials in order to automate the accounts payable dept "right now". Executives always do seem to push this way and it bites the IT Managers butt later when something doesnt work because we again had to have it up and running right now. The salesperson convinced that management that it was the best solution while I was pushing for an opensource (PHP, MySQL) application that we could code ourselves but beacuse that takes time to go through all the development processes the project was axed.
The GreatPlains project has already hit some shortfalls. Nobody knew GreatPlains and the salesman assured us that it would be "easy" to implement. So the management went without IT consultation and hired some accountant who said he knew GreatPlains. So therefore he could train the other accountants instead of paying the company that sold us the software.
While he used GreatPlains at another company but never set it up and knew nothing about SQL or how to install software. So I had to become a GreatPlains expert over night and set it up for them. Beacuse I lacked accouting knowledge and let him setup the vendors and payable stuff he screwed it up royally and now we are paying tons of $$$ trying to fix it (he ran the system for a whole month entering transactions).
We also are trying to get a Home-Brewed PHP MySQL application off the ground to manage the Accounts Payable, Marketing, and CRM. But again we are feeling the pinch of time from the higher ups and they think that by buying software from some salesperson will solve all the problems.
The ETA of our home-brewed application keeps increasing because all the department that need automation dont know what to automate and cannot come to conclusions.
Has anyone else had similar problems to this and how did you solve them and what recommendation can you give me in order to solve the problems we are faced?
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I work for a small company of about 150 people and am the only developer, it manager, web developer, telecommunications analyst, code monkey, etc etc. We have purchased GreatPlains financials in order to automate the accounts payable dept "right now". Executives always do seem to push this way and it bites the IT Managers butt later when something doesnt work because we again had to have it up and running right now. The salesperson convinced that management that it was the best solution while I was pushing for an opensource (PHP, MySQL) application that we could code ourselves but beacuse that takes time to go through all the development processes the project was axed. The GreatPlains project has already hit some shortfalls. Nobody knew GreatPlains and the salesman assured us that it would be "easy" to implement. So the management went without IT consultation and hired some accountant who said he knew GreatPlains. So therefore he could train the other accountants instead of paying the company that sold us the software. While he used GreatPlains at another company but never set it up and knew nothing about SQL or how to install software. So I had to become a GreatPlains expert over night and set it up for them. Beacuse I lacked accouting knowledge and let him setup the vendors and payable stuff he screwed it up royally and now we are paying tons of $$$ trying to fix it (he ran the system for a whole month entering transactions). We also are trying to get a Home-Brewed PHP MySQL application off the ground to manage the Accounts Payable, Marketing, and CRM. But again we are feeling the pinch of time from the higher ups and they think that by buying software from some salesperson will solve all the problems. The ETA of our home-brewed application keeps increasing because all the department that need automation dont know what to automate and cannot come to conclusions. Has anyone else had similar problems to this and how did you solve them and what recommendation can you give me in order to solve the problems we are faced?