Oil and gas companies were early adopters of SAP. But while many suffered the speed bumps of early ERP implementations, it’s been a generation since most of these companies have undergone a major transformation project. The current state of the market suggests that some carry the project genetic markers that make them highly susceptible to disaster. The good news is these companies can learn and derive benefits from our research on the wave of catastrophic IT project failures from the past eight years.

Start planning and implementing a successful program by first understanding why major transformational programs fail, what contributed to some poor decision-making, and what steps can be proactively taken to mitigate risks.

This presentation will address:

• Case studies of recent project failures, what went wrong, and what they have in common


• The one thing to get right before embarking on an SAP S/4HANA transformation


• Four early decisions that set the stage of success or failure


• Three practices to improve the quality of project decision-making

Typically, when companies take on big projects, they tend to throw in a flat rate of contingency, like 15%. The appropriate level of contingency for a big ERP transformation program is actually far higher, like 30%. This is often hard to justify to an executive team in the planning phase, but we will show methods to justify this higher contingency.

When contingencies get set too low, project teams typically take shortcuts in order to make their budget. As a result, they’ll not execute on activities that might have been expected. For example, a team that only tests twice to save money instead of three times as planned will likely have more problems as a result of skipping the third test.

Increase the probability of the achievement of anticipated program benefits: Those shortcuts taken to go-live early could limit anticipated program benefits. When capabilities in the system were left out and training to go-live was omitted as a result of the budget, we will show how this shortcutting affected a project’s benefits.

Key Business Benefits:

• Optimize contingency plans for ERP transformation.


• Improve testing to achieve the technology transition possible.


• Gain the best project possible, achieving optimal ROI.