John Belden
- Project Execution Advisory Leader, UpperEdge, LLC
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Articles by John Belden
Why You Are Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, and PwC’s #1 Priority-But Not in a Good Way
Reading Time: 4 minutes Struggling with SI contract negotiation? Learn how you can cut costs, regain control, and secure better terms with top consulting firms. Accenture recently released its earnings, and on the surface, things seem fine. Revenue is up slightly, AI bookings are growing, and leadership is pushing a positive transformation narrative. But if you dig deeper, the numbers don’t quite add up. Accenture has spent $11.1 billion on acquisitions over the past three years.
What Can You Learn from $20B in IT Projects?
Knowledge Center RSS Feed June 16, 2021John BeldenNo Comments This month, UpperEdge’s project staffing database will bring the total value of all projects completed over the last 5 years to just over $20B in value. To commemorate this milestone, we will share some insights to support your projects which may be counterintuitive to your thinking. These valuable and provocative learnings will be shared in a webinar.
Digital Transformation Leadership - What it Really Looks Like
March 17, 2021John BeldenNo Comments Executive sponsors play a key role in the success (or failure) of digital transformations. Taking these essential actions will tip the scales in your favor. Most companies will face the moment where digital transformation will come to the top of the executive stack of priorities. Typically, one or two executives are selected as the sponsors tasked with putting together the business case and the team to lead the organization into the future.
5 Critical Steps to Relaunch a Transformation Initiative
February 16, 2021John BeldenNo Comments Across all markets, transformation programs that have been on hold for close to a year are being launched or relaunched. Here’s how to make sure your transformation stays on the right track and lower your systems integrator spend by 15-20%.
6 Challenges of Agile at Scale for ERP
January 12, 2021John BeldenNo Comments Overcoming these challenges are key to using agile for an ERP implementation. It’s well worth the effort. Agile has been around for a long time by IT standards and has proven to be successful for many companies. As companies have evolved and progressed through the pioneering stage of agile, there has been a tendency to take on larger and larger efforts.
System Integrator Risk Mitigation Processes Often Have the Opposite Effect
Knowledge Center RSS Feed June 18, 2019John Belden2 CommentsShare I am going to go on a bit of a rant here. I am getting fed up with all of the IT project horror stories I have been reading and writing about. How can it be that projects continue to go wildly over budget or result in significant business disruptions but profits by systems integrators continue to rise?
A CIO's Checklist for Executing the COVID Pivot
Knowledge Center RSS Feed May 6, 2020John BeldenNo CommentsShare Simultaneously adjusting to new realities and developing forward-looking plans is near-impossible. This checklist will help you focus your efforts. In The Less Obvious Effects of an Economic Downturn on a Digital Transformation, I discussed the less evident short-term impact of COVID-19 on your digital transformation programs, but there are so many longer-term implications. Will the current economic crisis have an impact beyond 2020?
The Less Obvious Effects of an Economic Downturn on a Digital Transformation
As hard as it is to find a silver lining right now amid the general nervousness, restructuring of portfolios, and cost-cutting, economic downturns also present opportunities that were not previously planned. As anyone who has lived through a recession like the stock market crash of 1929 or the financial bust of 2008 can tell you, plans can change a great deal pre- and post-recession. Unfortunately, I had to navigate this scenario during the financial crisis of 2008 as a VP at a F500 manufacturer.
4 Lessons from the Hertz vs. Accenture Disaster
March 10, 2020John BeldenNo CommentsShare A tremendous amount of information and specific insight can be gleaned by analyzing projects gone wrong. Here are four lessons IT leaders can apply to any outsourcing agreement. Project successes tend to result in a lot of the same conclusions that every team identifies (e.g., we had a great team in place, or we had good leadership supporting it). Disasters, on the other hand can offer some of the best learning opportunities. The Hertz vs.
High-Performing Multi-Vendor Transformation Teams - How to Make Them Work
Knowledge Center RSS Feed January 14, 2020John BeldenNo CommentsShare With the advent of digital technologies, hybrid cloud solutions, and the evolution of ERP implementation models that demand higher levels of participation from the software vendors, the necessity to put in place high-performing multi-vendor teams is becoming more common. Program leaders are having to increasingly deal with vendors that have misaligned incentive plans or are looking to target each other’s project territory.
Are SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Making Bank in the Cloud?
Knowledge Center RSS Feed July 16, 2017John BeldenNo CommentsShare Over the past few years, cloud has been the growth engine of the software and consulting industry. The marketing machines of the vendor base are in full gear promoting the advantages of the cloud and touting how their new products and services will provide customers with a competitive advantage.
5 New Significant Developments in the Hertz vs. Accenture Case
Knowledge Center RSS Feed November 8, 2019John BeldenNo CommentsShare If you’ve followed the saga of Hertz vs. Accenture, you know that the surprises aren’t over. To quickly get you up to speed, in April 2019, Hertz filed a lawsuit against Accenture claiming that Accenture delivered a flawed product, exhibited extortionist-like behavior to fix it, and in general, breached its contracts with Hertz.
Accenture Tells Hertz, "You Should Have Read the Fine Print”
Knowledge Center RSS Feed July 16, 2019John BeldenNo CommentsShare In April 2019, Hertz filed a lawsuit against Accenture claiming that Accenture delivered a flawed product, exhibited extortionist-like behavior to fix it, and in general, breached its contracts with Hertz. In its amended lawsuit on June 20th, Hertz took aim at Accenture’s talent and trashed the team that was working on the Hertz program. On July 15th, Accenture delivered their response to the lawsuit.
Hertz Takes Accenture Out of the Driver’s Seat
April 25, 2019John BeldenNo CommentsShare This blog was updated on June 5th, 2019 to include the latest court orders. Hertz Files $36M Suit Against Accenture for Flawed Digital Initiative On April 19, 2019, one of the world’s largest vehicle rental companies, Hertz, filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Accenture, a global management consulting and professional firm that provides strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations services.
A Hazardous Waste: An Overview of ICL’s Failed SAP Implementation
March 1, 2019John BeldenNo CommentsShare While there is no magic bullet for preventing an IT disaster, understanding why major transformational programs fail is a great first step to planning and implementing a successful program. One catastrophic IT project failure that is rich with lessons is Israel Chemical Limited’s (ICL) failed SAP implementation.
Show Your Legacy Programmer Some Love
Large IT enabled transformation efforts frequently have hundreds and sometimes thousands of people actively engaged in delivering on a complex project plan. These programs typically require a diverse set of IT, business, and project management skills. Frequently these programs will find themselves resource constrained, and the source of the constraint might surprise you. It’s not the high priced system integration executive, or the newly minted expert in the HANA database.
Three Reasons Teradata’s Lawsuit Matters to SAP’s Current Clients
At first glance, the Teradata lawsuit against SAP might just appear to be simply a dispute between two software companies regarding intellectual property. However, this is far from true. This lawsuit could have a profound impact on SAP’s current customer base as they look to negotiate with SAP in the procurement of the S/4HANA platform.
SAP Tells Teradata to go Jump in a (Data) Lake
September 3, 2018John BeldenNo CommentsShare On June 21, 2018, Teradata filed a civil lawsuit against SAP claiming that SAP stole its trade secrets and was using monopolistic practices to squeeze Teradata out of the enterprise data warehousing market. On August 31, 2018, SAP responded with a data-based (pun intended) motion to dismiss, which essentially says we didn’t do it and even if we did, it is too late to file suit.
Like Taking Candy from a Baby: Sacramento Schools Claim Workday Took Advantage of Them and File Suit
Move over SAP, you are no longer alone in being sued with regards to California’s state payroll system. While the failed implementation of the California system was an order of magnitude larger than that of Sacramento schools, it is clear that the schools did not learn anything from this previous failure and some would say they must have skipped a class or two when it came to properly evaluating and contracting ERP systems.
Teradata Sues SAP - Implications for SAP and Its Customers
On June 21st 2018, ERP software vendor, SAP, claims to have been blindsided with a lawsuit by big data vendor, Teradata. The lawsuit claims SAP inappropriately used trade secrets and is using unlawful means to monopolize the data warehouse market. Teradata is seeking to halt SAP from using these trade secrets in its products and is seeking damages for lost profits.
Wipro Responds to National Grid’s SAP Implementation Billion Dollar Lawsuit
On November 5th, 2012, swamped in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the National Grid management team made the decision to go-live with a major SAP implementation. The cost of the damage done by the failed implementation easily surpassed the costs that had been incurred to implement. An external audit determined that the failed implementation was due to an array of problems from the definition of scope and budget to inadequate testing and business preparation.
MillerCoors Files $100M Suit against HCL for Flawed SAP Implementation - What we know and what we would like to know
March 23, 2017John BeldenNo CommentsShare On March 13th, 2017, American brewery MillerCoors filed a breach of contract lawsuit against India based HCL Technologies, an IT and Engineering services firm. The complaint filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division alleges that HCL knowingly or with reckless disregard for the impact on MillerCoors did not comply with the terms of its services agreement.
Eight Decisions that Doomed Cover Oregon and why Oracle will Prevail in Litigation.
From an outsiders perspective it is all over but the shouting. The foundation the State of Oregon is attempting to build in its suit against Oracle is crumbling. Oracle is going to deliver a beating to Oregon that makes the Ducks loss to the Buckeyes appear like a close game. Oregon’s new Governor, Kate Brown, has signed the bill dissolving Cover Oregon, a private company launched by the state to manage Oregon’s version of federally mandated healthcare exchange.
7 Decisions that Doomed Cover Oregon and Why Oracle will Prevail in Litigation
March 16, 2015John BeldenNo Comments From an outsider’s perspective, it is all over but the shouting. The foundation the State of Oregon is attempting to build in its suit against Oracle is crumbling. Oracle is going to deliver a beating to Oregon that makes the Ducks loss to the Buckeyes appear like a close game.
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