18 famous ERP disasters, dustups, and disappointments
A catalog of spectacular ERP failures costing hundreds of millions of dollars, revealing the predictable patterns that sink enterprise software projects: bad data, rushed timelines, and the gap between vendor promises and reality.
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TLDR
• Target Canada's "fresh start" ERP had 70% error rate from manual data entry, contributing to their complete market exit
• Hershey's compressed 48-month timeline to 30 months, went live during Halloween season without testing, couldn't process $100M in orders
• Lidl spent €500M over 7 years trying to customize SAP for their purchase-price inventory system before scrapping it entirely
• National Grid went live with SAP during Hurricane Sandy recovery, leading to payroll chaos and $75M settlement with integrator
• Waste Management sued SAP for $500M after being promised $220M in annual benefits and 18-month timeline that never materialized
In Detail
ERP implementations fail in remarkably consistent patterns across industries and decades. The most common killer is data quality: Target Canada assumed starting fresh would avoid legacy data problems, but manual entry by inexperienced staff produced 70% error rates that crippled their supply chain. Southeast Power's corrupted data made accurate invoicing impossible four years into their SAP deployment.
Timeline pressure compounds every other problem. Hershey's cut the recommended 48-month implementation to 30 months to beat Y2K, skipped testing, and went live in July 1999—right before their peak Halloween and Christmas season. The result: $100M in unprocessed orders, 19% profit decline, and 8% stock drop in a day. National Grid faced similar pressure but went live during Hurricane Sandy recovery, leading to payroll disasters and vendor invoice chaos. The gap between vendor promises and reality is enormous: Waste Management was sold on $220M annual benefits and 18-month timeline, ended up suing SAP for $500M. MillerCoors' unified SAP rollout had 8 critical defects and 47 high-severity issues at go-live, sparking a $100M lawsuit (later settled).
Customization spirals are particularly dangerous. Lidl insisted SAP accommodate their purchase-price inventory system instead of standard retail-price tracking, leading to €500M spent over 7 years before abandoning the project. The lawsuits reveal a pattern: companies sue integrators and vendors, cases drag on for years, then settle privately. The Navy spent $1B on four incompatible ERP pilots before scrapping three and consolidating on SAP for another $800M. These aren't edge cases—they're the norm for enterprise software at scale.