Analysis of the ERP Acquisition and Implementation Process rly 1999. I was asked to attend the final sales presentation made by PeopleSoft to your company's senior staff. The presentation itself was artful, and the promises made by PeopleSoft made the decision to purchase the software almost a foregone conclusion. Unfortunately, certain red flags at that meeting were ignored, including comments and questions from your Vice President of Administration. Among them was the concern that PeopleSoft expressly disclaimed all warranties relating to this software, including the warranty of merchantability and suitability for its intended purpose.
The original plan called for your company to implement what was referred to as a vanilla version of the ERP system. Costs would be cut and time to implementation would be shortened if PeopleSoft's program could be used without customization. Part of the rationale for avoiding customization was that customized code is expensive to create. Worse, the code would not automatically transfer to the next version released by PeopleSoft - meaning you would either have to pay to customize each version of the software or continue to use an older version which PeopleSoft would stop supporting eventually.
The decision not to allow your department directors to see or evaluate the ERP software until after it was purchased was a mistake. When the directors were introduced to the ERP program, they were given a half day overview which focused prim
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