$254 million down the drain.
And this is surprising, why?
LMBO
There are private companies with that many employees. How come these companies don’t suffer the same problems as State government? Is the secret word: corruption?
Trouble with govt contractors ping
Massive, horribly over-priced, hopelessly inefficient government gets massive, horribly over-priced, hopelessly inefficient software system. California government and SAP - no one can say they don’t deserve each other.
SAP, the single most failed software that idiots keep buying for some strange reason. I’ve seen many SAP failures and those projects are not cheap. Many are in the $100 million range.
This is just Solyndra on a smaller scale. Follow the money.
I have been involved in a couple of software projects administered by a bureaucracy. It is simply astounding what foolish, irrelevant features are demanded by the arm chair "leaders". I would blame the state of CA on this one, not the poor contractors. Nevertheless, I'm sure CA will drive them into bankruptcy, anyway, to cover their own incompetence.
SAP can work very well for an organization. It’s gotten better, but you wind up having a more successful implementation if you do things the SAP way. Many times, this means changing the organization’s operations. And, after the upheaval is over, you usually wind up with a more efficient organization.
But government bureaucracies do not value efficiency. Thus, a computer project that is aimed to maximize efficiency will be sabotaged from within.
There is a word for this: Byzantine. I doubt it is possible to develop an accounting system for this monstrosity. And even if you got it to work the communists in Sacramento are constantly creating reams of new rules, regulations, and laws.
I had a long tenure with a Fortune 500 company which decided to implement SAP. At age 53 it became the “final staw” in my decision to quit and begin a second career.