Last week at the Strategy Lab we did a quick video on the definition of an IT Project failure - a simplistic yet critical post in establishing the foundation for our upcoming discussions on the 9 critical steps of implementing enterprise software that will optimize your business. 

In today's talk we decided to review three examples of IT project implementations that went horribly wrong.  The boondoggles we reviewed fit into one or more of the following IT Project failure categories including: 1. Cost Overruns 2. Missed Deadlines and 3. Failure to meet business expectations. 

Sadly these failure examples are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to IT Project Failures (see here for other famous examples).

A special thank you goes out to Thomas Wailgum down at CIO magazine for contributing two really good examples of IT Project failure (Hershey & Nike) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for reminding us of the billion dollar database failure that tax paying Canadians purchased at the beginning of this decade.  You can read further into these cases by following the links below:

1. Not So Sweet ERP Implementation by Hershey
2. Nike runs into a speed bump
3. The billion dollar Canadian Gun Registry

Projects - especially IT projects fail!  In many cases IT projects fail more often then they succeed.  Reports by Gartner, Butler, Forrester Research and AMR all point to disappointment. Consider the following CRM failure statistics:

* Research data care of Michael Krigsman from his ZD Net Post CRM Failure rates 2001- 2009

The above failure data is troubling and sends a strong signals that much room for improvement exists.  The data variances reported by the different agencies potentially indicate that the word failure is ambiguous and is defined differently depending on what character you played in the software implementation process.  It is for this reason that Paul Hart and I sat down earlier this week to help define what makes an IT Project Fail. 

#IT Fail - Defining IT Project Failure from Waggware on Vimeo.

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Paul Hart and I sat down earlier this week and discussed some of the reasons why organizations invest heavily into implementing new software. Whether a company implements a CRM (Customer Resource Management, CIS (Customer Information System), ERP (Enterprise Resource Management) or BI (Business Intelligence) solutions the ultimate outcome must include:

1. A reduction in operating expenses (enabling efficiency, reducing waste)
2. Improving the customer experience (customer response time, customer concerns and reducing churn)

During our discussion we used the example of deploying IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technology a solution that automates customer centric business processes and relieves the pressure on live agents handling consumer calls. Using the IVR implementation scenario we had a candid talk how implementing an IVR will help improve operating expenses and improve the customer experience.