Packaged Software and Data Modelling [English spoken]

When implementing enterprise software packages, the single most common reason for dissatisfaction, or even total failure, is a “data model mismatch.” That’s a bold statement, but it is backed up by the speaker’s 40 year consulting career and many “project recovery” assignments. In those cases, an organisation has spent tens or hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars (or euros) on implementing purchased software, and it simply doesn’t work or works so poorly the organisation is worse off than before. This presentation will share the common factors in these failures, and also some success stories and how data modelling fits in helping solving these problems.

• How one of the world’s most admired companies spent $1B on an implementation and achieved worse performance.
• The public institution that spent $80M configuring cloud-based HR and Payroll software, had nothing functional to show for it, and how the situation was resolved.
• On a brighter note, how a manufacturer applied the techniques we’ll discuss (including data modelling!) over the software vendor’s objections and became a global showcase account.
• “Types vs. Instances,” “Challenge the ones,” and other simple patterns that can make a huge difference.
• Why the “data-process connection” is essential, and the end-to-end business process perspective works so well with the data perspective