Waste Management v. SAP: It's Time to Trash This Lawsuit
The monetary damages sought by Waste Management keep growing, but it's a zero-sum game being played.
Picture, in your mind, one of those fast-talking auctioneers. Be sure to include a Southern drawl. And, what the heck, add a cowboy hat to your visualization, too.
Print
Got the image in your mind? Can you hear his voice? Good.
Now start imagining his rapid-fire verbal ascent, beginning with "$100 million." And we're off!
$200 million?! Higher!
When you're at $350 million, take a brief pause and catch your breath, before going even higher to $400 million!
Now stop at $500 million. Wasn't that exciting?!
Perhaps it's just my warped sense of humor, but that's what I keep hearing in my brain as I ponder Waste Management's lawsuit against SAP, and the fact that the trash-disposal behemoth has continued to pursue the case and raise the damages sought since it first filed suit in the District Court of Harris County, Texas, in 2008.
The saga actually started three years earlier, in March 2005, with an RFP and ERP software demonstration. In court filings, Waste Management claimed the SAP product demo was "rigged" and "fake." SAP countered that Waste Management knew what it was getting with the software and couldn't keep up its end of the project implementation.
The "bidding" (a.k.a., damages sought by Waste Management) started at $100 million. Blame, acrimony and huge legal bills ensued.
At some point during the process, Waste Management said in a filing that damages had increased to $350 million. That probably was around the time in 2009 when Waste Management announced that its "first-quarter earnings dropped substantially in part due to its 'abandonment' of SAP software that it claims didn't perform up to expectations," reported the IDG News Service's Chris Kanaracus, who's been following the legal saga.
And now we're up to $500 million in damages in 2010. Do I hear $750 million?!
What a waste. Of time. Of resources. Of money. Of talent.
Make no mistake: I'm not trying to "blame the victim" in this dispute. In most of these "he said-she said" cases of failed software implementations, the true fault lies with both parties.
What I'm pointing out is that the damage has already been done—extensive, lasting damage for everyone involved.
Now it's time to abandon this destructive lawsuit, Waste Management, for the sake of your business, your customers, your employees and your new CIO.
What's the end game, here? What's going to be the return on your legal investment? Do you think you're actually going to get all that money?
Of course, who am I to pass judgment on this legal case. I'm just an observer who's spoken with many CIOs and IT leaders who almost universally recommend avoiding nasty, expensive and protracted lawsuits when it comes to dustups with software vendors. (See Why You Shouldn't Sue Software Vendors--Even If They Deserve It for the discussion.)
Initiating a major lawsuit against a software vendor should almost never be "Option B" or "Option C." More like "Option Z."
As for the Waste Management execs, I wonder what they now think about that 18-month proposed ERP implementation, first considered back in 2005, and how ridiculously expensive it has gotten ever since they called in the lawyers.
Do you Tweet? Follow me on Twitter @twailgum. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline.
What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
