What Would Your Failed Enterprise Software Implementation Say if it Could Talk?

Today on The Panorama Angle our guest is Bill Baumann, Director of Software Expert Witness Services, with Panorama Consulting Group. 

We will be discussing what a software expert witness is and what they do.  We will also be discussing what some of the most common issues are that cause a failed enterprise software implementation and how to avoid them.

Read about some of the most interesting points from the podcast here: https://hubs.la/H0K4XSZ0

Transcript

spk_1:   0:13
Hello and thank you for joining us today on Panorama Angle. I'm joined today with Bill Ballymun. He is the director of Expert Witness Services with Panorama Consulting Group. Bill, thank you for joining us today.

spk_0:   0:29
Save your life. Thanks. Thank you very much for having me on. Um I think this topic will be of interest to a number of people. So again, I'm just happy to have the opportunity. Hate?

spk_1:   0:42
No, no problem at all. Now, today's topic is What would your field implementation say if it could talk? And I guess, Bill, what we'd want to start out with is what exactly is an expert? Witnesses it like what you see on TV with, uh, you know, say the show law and order where they have ah, doctor, blood splatter person come in and give their opinion. Is that what an expert witnesses? What exactly do you guys do?

spk_0:   1:10
Well, it's frankly, it's not that far off. Only obviously we're not dealing with personal injury accidents here. What we're dealing with in our particular cases failed implementations. So we are brought in typically by the attorney, either for the, uh, plaintiff or the defendant to provide expert witness opinion as to what we feel where the causes or the, uh issues that came up with the implementation that caused the failure.

spk_1:   1:42
Okay, so So this is basically you. You can represent either the plaintiff or the defendant. So if let's say it's a vendor getting I don't know if suit is the right term. But if if they're going to some kind of litigation, you can represent either, either side is that correct. Is their preference on which side you like to be on?

spk_0:   2:06
Well, you know, frankly, the way we we've done this over the last, I don't know, 15 years we've been doing expert witness. We probably run about 60% of the time. We're representing the developer and the other 40% of the time, the actual client, um, that maybe developer or end, usually the system integrator. So, typically, when there's a suit, um, depending upon who's not getting paid or who's not, you know, feels that their implementation is bad. They're going to sue the developer of the system integrator or in the other case, obviously, the developer system integrator will sue the client.

spk_1:   2:48
Okay, I think I've seen actually some of these. And, uh, in the news article, I'm a little geeky, and I get the alerts of things that are going on in the air P industry. Uh, so what kind of value, though, does doesn't expert witness bring to that kind of litigation? Can't they just, you know, say here the documents And this is our case. What kind of value to do you guys bring?

spk_0:   3:11
That's a good question, because the documents still change. We do, You know, there were. The attorney does their discovery, and the documents are all produced. The attorney goes through those documents. Some of the larger cases we have that go to some of the larger firms. There are people within their that have a fairly decent background, understand what business process management is. Um, you know, implementation processes, things like that. The problem is that they don't have the level of experience we have. So they bring us into a pine on particular areas that we see is we kind of go back forensically through the documents and build. Ah, a story or a, uh, a kind of a timeline in terms of what happened. What went wrong? What went right and where did the ultimate causes lie? So that's our main word. They're kind of our main methodology in terms of how we create what's ultimately going to be a report. Typically, it's report sometimes were deposed as well, and that's what's given to the court. In a lot of cases, the judge does not have the technical capabilities he might suspect to be able to go through, look at these discovery documents and say, Oh, I see exactly what the issues are. Um, again, the attorneys do that, but they need someone like us to help put them into terms that the either the judge or the jury in some cases of the arbitrator can look at and make sense. Adam.

spk_1:   4:50
Okay, so it's you guys that kind of almost like the C. S. I, you know, you kind of just break it down and go through the timeline and put it in layman's terms so that a normal person can actually understand what actually happened in whatever the case is. Is that Am I getting that right?

spk_0:   5:09
Yeah. Use the word CS eyes a good word for it, because again, this literally is forensic. We're doing this after the fact, we're going back in time and seeing what happened and creating our opinion. And again, it is an opinion, not a legal opinion. It's a technical opinion on what actually occurred and why the implementation

spk_1:   5:28
broke down. Okay, Now you said you get, like, 60 40. What are some of the, I guess, what are the causes? Like what causes that is it just failed implementations? Is it, uh, you know something else? What? What? What extent is it, like maybe ah, bad contract, Um, or just somebody didn't do their job. You know what kind of causes that? Ah, typically, that you see on on the cases that you are represented.

spk_0:   5:59
Okay. Well, I I think you're pretty much asking me. Why do these things go bad, right?

spk_1:   6:03
What are usually much? Yeah, like

spk_0:   6:05
Okay, well, that's fair. Um, there's no one answer, but I can tell you that in probably just use it. You know, around number of 80 to 90% of the implementation failures. We see there's one common element, and that would be organizational change management plan. And there it easily or a lack of one or insufficient one. So typically, if the software has been picked correctly. The suffers mental work OK, that's not usually issue. That's the technology side that comes down to making sure you just did good requirements gathering. And that is an issue. You know, sometimes people don't do correct requirements gathering and end up with a piece of software that doesn't fit you. Not usually the case secondary is the processes that are involved that support that software. Those the there certainly sometimes issues in terms of. Did they go through the process management? Did they re engineer process management? Where did they try to make the software modify the software? So it did things the way they do things you know all the time. But again, the most re occurring issue again is they didn't communicate well with their employees. Um, they did it Inadequate training and education to the employees. Um, they didn't deal with resistance from to change from the employees. Um, many people, obviously, uh, using many people are resistant to change, especially if you're seeing a system coming. It's gonna change the job you have, and you're worried. Are you going to get let go or in hopefully, most cases, people get redeployed but that has to be communicated well on then. Probably one of the biggest ones is just lack of community of commitment from the senior management. They just say, Well, we've got a new project and, you know, then there behind it, their funding it. But they're not out there being cheerleaders for it. So we see that, um, I mentioned you know, the selection process. Obviously want to pick the right package. You want to make sure you have the right resource is assigned to your project. When I say resource is, that's also from a personnel standpoint, you really want to have your A team, right? The folks that know the business the best should be working on. This is a major project, an expensive project. So make sure that an A team is there, and sometimes you don't see that happen. And then the last thing I'd say is probably project management in the planning of the project. If you don't plan well and you don't execute to a plan, you'll you'll you know, it'll come up the real's at some point.

spk_1:   8:55
No, I mean, that makes sense. Obviously, you want to bring the best people in your organization to Teoh help out with the project. Ah, I guess the the other question that I have is so you said the majority of the time. It's, Ah, organizational change. Um and is that I mean, is that 100% on the on the on the client or the person that's actually receiving the software? Um, that's what you're seeing. Or are there times where say, You know, the vendor had some kind of claws and their and their ah statement of work that, you know, maybe the client didn't catch. Is there anything like that, or is it almost always fall on on the on the client not doing their due diligence and and making sure that they're selecting and managing everything correctly?

spk_0:   9:48
Oh, you know, most clients that we deal with that where there's a lock suit tends to be a fairly large implementation. These aren't you know, these are small cases for small companies or tend to be larger ones. So the clients are typically more familiar, more experienced, so they know these things exist. So within their statement of work that they received from their system integrator or from the developer, there will be organizational change issue is almost always addressed. It's a question of what detail there is. And one of the biggest things that you can do to help protect yourself from failed implementation is to make sure you don't have an ambiguous statement of work. You've got something that's barely excuse me. That very clearly defines the delivery bols know When are they going out? Who's responsible? How you're gonna work together on a whole number of other things I'll probably talk to as we move along. But, um, that's one of the critical issues. Is that again things are left aren't left, you know, loose Italian down as tight as you can. So there's no again guesswork in terms of Well, I thought you were doing that. Are you said you were doing no CM? What was it? Well, it wasn't just training. There were 13 other things. We should have been done with that. And all you said is you're gonna train our employees.

spk_1:   11:18
Okay? So really just clarifying. You know, every step of what's needed inside the S. O. W. Is is ah is really what's needed are the M essays or master service agreements. Um, and s a W, sir. Are they pretty much standard throughout, You know, all developers or ah, vendors, Or can they Can they be different? Like maybe some vendors don't even do organizational change, and it falls on the Maybe the client actually get 1/3 party for? For that?

spk_0:   11:53
That's absolutely true, Samuel. These agreements, you'd be surprised the variants in terms of the detail and the professionalism within them. Sometimes again, as you might suspect, the the you know, Tier one guys, the S a p, ease the oracles, the Microsoft, their stuff is lined out. I mean, they they do a really good job with it. As you move down into the tier two and tier threes where he may have, like a both on piece of software, you'd be surprised at you get a one page document to go that this is what this is what you're gonna dio. I'm gonna make your software run, you know, to your specifications. And that's what they leave it. As so, um, the point is, yet they very, quite a bit and again, it's incumbent upon the client to make sure that they come back to the either the system integrator there or the vendor. If what? Depending upon who's doing the actual implementation and say I need for the clarification and to your point, let's just say it is O. C. M. If it's missing, how are we going to deal with that? You know, if you're expecting us to go get 1/3 party to do that, there's gotta be collaboration between three organizations or you'll. You'll have a mess.

spk_1:   13:12
I say, Uh, I think you made a good point. You know, it's it's where if it's just like a one pager and it says, you know, we're just gonna make your software work Well, how do you define the costs of that? I mean, I there are a bunch of different models, uh, you know, being, ah, developer myself. You know, there's a bunch of different models you can do, fix, cost where it's basically this is what you're gonna get in. This is what you're gonna pay. And, um, you know, that's it, Um, and you have, you know, time and material right where it's just it's ongoing and and you see that a lot with the going and the LA times those go out of you know, over over. Ah, Budget. And and, uh, you know, you get scope, creep where they just keep adding things on, and it's not in the original document. Um, so what's really I mean, the differences of you know, your fixed costs and your time and material you're not to exceed time and material. Um, And how does that affect a an organization Where the employee implications of it. When there, you know, making these s o W. So if a software vendor comes in and says, Here's your one page and you're going to we're gonna make we're gonna make this software work and this is how much it's gonna cost. You know, what are the implications of something like that?

spk_0:   14:42
Well, that's a good question. Bless you. Looking at it from both sides. Let's look at it first from the either to the developer or the system integrator size. They've got those three options in terms of fixed cost model, right? What's the price? It's gonna be x number of dollars. Regardless of what happens, it's gonna be X amount. Assuming that the client states somewhere within the scope with the you know, the terms outlined in this in the statement of work. The problem with fixed cost is it is sense the provider to potentially cut corners. Not all of them do that, but because it's fixed costs, They're gonna make more money if they can deliver, obviously, you know, using less hours and they estimated to do the actual Fisk got fixed cost.

spk_1:   15:36
That makes that makes session. I just had a house built, and, uh, we're having warranty work done today because it looks like the cuts importers. So, um, I definitely understand that

spk_0:   15:46
it does happen. Now. Some people ask for what? What the system Pinegar think is the worst since situation, which is a not to exceed. So it's like a fixed cost only, let's just say the contracts for $100,000. Um, OK, it can't exceed 100,000 but if they only use, let's just say $70,000 worth of time, they can only build for 70,000. They don't get that $30,000 difference where in a fixed cost model, they dio So typically, if somebody asks for a not to exceed contract, there'll be a premium attached by the person that used in the configuration of the implementation to make up for the fact that they don't have any potential, you know, additional profit. Um, the rest realization. Most folks, um, that we work with working a time material basis, and most people get kind of scared. And they go, well, time material. What keeps them from just building this villainous, villainous, villainous? Well, again, If they provided you with an estimate and they've been very specific in their statement of work of what hours are assigned to what deliverables, you can go down through there and see OK, these look like reasonable amounts of ours being assigned for particular deliverables. Not every job obviously uses every single hour assigned to every single deliverable task. So there's the ability to kind of move things around. As a general rule, I like to look for somewhere between 10% over to 10% under on a time material contract. That doesn't mean they all do that, but that's an acceptable amount of variance. If somebody starts getting over 20% they should be issuing change orders because something's happened. Either they didn't do a good job in terms of collecting requirements or the client's change things or the client hasn't participated well, so that's one of the things we look for in a time of material contract. If there's large overruns and somebody's going to litigation, why does Why does appear?

spk_1:   17:59
Okay, so would you say that sometimes you could see, you know, you have your fixed costs and then you explain that time materials and also the not to exceed. Um, would you say, you know, if they let's say they it's $100,000 contract on their allocated, you know, maybe there at 70,000 with a fudge. You know, some numbers extend some hours. Things like that make up some whatever, whatever the case would, maybe to make up that 30,000 Would that be something that could justify, Ah, an expert witness case?

spk_0:   18:36
Well, we most of us would call that fraud. Um, if somebody's man, in fact, we call it padding or ghosting. I mean, ghost. Ours is a lot of terminology for that, but yeah, you're exactly right. If somebody's basically padding their billing in order to be able to realize that additional profit and they're not adding any real value, then yeah, they're they're committing a form of fraud.

spk_1:   18:59
Okay, so I know that, you know, I mean, now you know with it with the fraud and or the things that can happen you have. These new models are relatively new. It's And there the Sasser software as a service models, it's they're not is customizable from my understanding, uh, for the client. So how would you know? How would somebody do that with, say, ah SAS model on. And what are the differences between, like, a software as a service versus ah ah. Hosted, Ah, or an on premise solution. I mean, and what are the what are the risks involved with that in regards to, um, hours and how litigation works?

spk_0:   19:46
Well, you know, it's an interesting you bring that up. And of course, we all heard the word cloud right there, right in the face. Everybody talks about cloud solution, cloud solutions, cloud solutions,

spk_1:   19:56
things in the sky. Right? That's what. Yeah, that's that's about

spk_0:   20:00
what they're worth sometimes. But excuse me so software as a service. And, you know, I'll point to one of the biggest wins out there. I think we all know, um, Salesforce, but certainly there's many others. Um, basically is providing this subscription, you know, building you monthly. So that's one way the contract changes or is different from the standpoint that your you have an operating expense for sort of capital expense. It's billed monthly. There's a term on the contract, and basically you're paying, you know, X number of dollars typically per user each month, wherever many users air consuming that service, Um, you don't own the software Typically upgrades air done. Sometimes it is. It often is twice a year. But when the upgrades coming, you're given a, you know, a advanced notice that within six months or whatever timeframe they you've got in your contract, you're gonna be moving to the new, um, the new version regardless, if you want to or not. If you don't want to, you risk falling out of support. So that's one of the big differences. Is the support changes in a hosted bottle. You still on the software? You buy the software, it's yours. But now you're on someone else's hardware, which has some benefits because if you're smaller, obviously you don't have to have ah, system admin and a lot of the typical things you have yet on print software. But again, you own that software, so you're not forced to do upgrades. Um, that obviously that contract looks a lot different, cause again, you've got a, you know, a large expenditure. Typically, it's a capital expenditure. And again, your hope you're all your heart wears somebody else's on someone else's premise. Hopefully, it's got polos and different things like that. And then, of course, there's the traditional model. We're all familiar with his V on premise, right? You got servers, they're all over the place. You've gotta figure out how to get your firewall up. You know, all the different things that go along with having hardware. Same scenario that with the software, you own it. So you where you were responsible for maintaining it in terms of if there's gonna be an upgrade, you decide when that happens. And, of course, you'll you work with your system integrator typically to do that. But you can imagine owning an asset versus more or less renting and asset as a much different looking contract. And so sometimes it's very difficult when people are comparing. Oh, should I go with the SAS model or should I go with you? no way on Prem or whatever it is that look at the contracts or the excuse me, the estimates. And they're like they can't make heads or tails at him because they're written from, you know, extremely differently.

spk_1:   22:50
Okay, Yeah. I mean, I think I remember seeing a study that, you know after, Gosh, I want to say it was like, five years. Um, the cost of implementing your software is about the same as ah has actually running on a SAS. So it actually kind of breaks even after five or seven years or something like that. Um, but I do have a question regarding specifically, sauce bottle. So obviously with hosted, right, you own the software. So you own your data and on premise, Same thing you can control it. But for the SAS models, um, do you get like, can they hold your data hostage or, you know, what are the security of the implications of that? You see what I would see? Where I'm going with that. It's It's basically you don't own the software. So do you own the data that's being put in the software?

spk_0:   23:47
What a great question. I only say that because there are certain companies that when they, um, have a SAS model, that data then becomes part of their common data set, and it is not uncommon for that day to be sold. So is it your data? Certainly you have access to your data, but they will also have access to your data as well. And that's not something they're doing illegally that will be covered in the contracts. So that's something you really want to see. And the bigger point you just made earlier was, Let's say that you want to move. You're not happy with the type of software or you. Your business has changed whatever it is, and you need to get your data out and moved over onto a different platform somewhere else. Um, you're not a very high priority to them. Um, I have heard stories where three months was, like not uncommon. Sometimes it's even longer six months before you can get your data from the SAS provider. So you can imagine what kind of havoc that might reek in here trying to put a schedule together. And every time you call, they say, Yeah, well, it will be in two weeks. It will be in two weeks, and you've got somebody prepped and you gotta You want to do some data cleansing or whatever it is you're all being, you're being held up by the fact it's not hostage. They're not. Of course not gonna let you have. You don't pay your bill. That's it. That's a given, right? Right. But even if you have paid your bill, you may not get that data as fast as you would like. Um, so that's something else that you have to consider when you're working in the SAS model. And you also mentioned the topic of security. Um, most of those guys frankly have better security than most people would ever have on premise. But again, your data is on a, you know, common database. So a typically, like a pharaoh for space defense company or something that can't use sauce? Sass is a platform.

spk_1:   25:48
Okay, so they would probably go with if they didn't wanna have a bunch of servers. They would need to go something like a hosted model where they can. They're just basically renting the hardware or the infrastructure.

spk_0:   26:02
Right? And it would be someplace that had again, you know, backup locations, all types of things that might just turn out to be too expensive, depending upon the size of the organization. I'm sure Lockheed wouldn't have that problem, But some other people might

spk_1:   26:16
right Right now, um, with sass. I mean, I was I would assume that there are some system integrators because not every not a single software that can do everything. So you would have to have some kind of integration. But how do you deal with SE system integrator that has, you know, they're overrunning on their costs. Ah, you know, And maybe they're, you know, they're gonna say, Oh, we'll walk away unless you pay us more money. Isn't that kind of a hostage situation? Is that something that you would bring to litigation? Is that I mean or mediation or something like that? How do you deal with that?

spk_0:   26:58
Well, typically, if you've done your job or your attorney's done their job and again necessarily typical fodder for attorneys in terms of looking at these contracts, they look at him from a legal standpoint, companies such as ours and there, certainly others out there that do the same thing that look at statement of works. You want to make sure there's a good escalation clause procedure in terms of what's gonna happen when we have a problem. Because this is not a perfect science. There's invariably issues, and you have to have a before the hit before the problem occurs. How do we do our escalation? Where does it go? What happens if we're not able to deal with it that they were not able to resolve it to your point? Do we end up in mediation, which is far preferable and going to, you know, arbitration or even, you know, ending up, You know, for a full litigation, Um, case. So, um, when you look at those types of things and put them together, you've gotta again anticipate there's going to be problems. But if the, you know, if the system integrator has followed all the deliverables and you followed the roles and responsibilities correctly, um, and someone says I'm walking out on your project yet that that's pretty much gonna be there's gonna be some type of litigation is gonna come with that.

spk_1:   28:25
Okay, uh, now I have ah, close friend. He runs a technology software company, and they are actually in the mist of selecting their new E r P. System. Um, I actually think they just finished and he said that they ran a demo and it looked great. But when they started doing everything, um, it doesn't have all those bells and whistles that were basically shown. Is that common practice or eyes that something to like, Do they have to pay mawr? Basically, they showed him, you know, the moon and the stars, and they're getting a couple rocks on the beach.

spk_0:   29:08
Wow, that sounds like some of the cars I bought in my life. Yeah, you know, it's not. I'd like to say it's a lot more uncommon than it is, but typically, you know, any time someone's gonna do a demo, they're gonna want to show you the newest, latest and greatest things they have, so they may show you beta versions. They may show you things that are just being released, which again you have to think about. Do you really want to be the guinea pig? That's gonna be one of the first implementations of that new version to begin with. But to your point, if you've been shown that version, the newest stuff they've got, you know, with all the sizzle of the Greek new dashboards, whatever it is that they you know, they're showing you that you're going. Wow, that's just the best thing in the world. And then the next thing you know, as you say, they've implemented aversion back or, you know, at least one sometimes maybe even to in some cases, Um, it all depends upon how the licensing agreement reads. It may very well say that you are going to get virgin aid and you saw version 10 in the demo. Now is that fraud? Is that misrepresentation? That's up to your attorney. Um, again, all I can say is it's not uncommon for them to show you the best stuff they have. Part of how you get or deal with that is you make sure you have demonstrations, scripts so that all the vendors that you see demonstrations show you the same type of software or they follow the scripts so that you make sure that they are being what's the right word consistent in terms of what they're showing. And if there are things that again, you sit there and you say, Well, that that things just jumped. Maybe they just put in HTML screen and there something like that. That, in my mind is something I would put in a report significantly, you know, highlight to a judge in terms of how the sales been conducted, because misrepresentation the sales process. I'm not saying sales people are all trying to do that, but it certainly happens because they're trying to get a cell.

spk_1:   31:20
So it would make sense, I guess off to talk to my friend and say, Well, what version did they Ah, did they show you and what's actually in the contract? And that's why it's really important, I guess Teoh to really look at these contracts because you have you easily a couple $1,000,000 arm or on the line. So having somebody go through that would be really important and making sure that what is in the contract is what's actually being shown. And am I getting that right?

spk_0:   31:48
Absolutely. And that's again attorneys air great, the legal side, right? That's what they're paid to do. They're paid to know the law. Um, you may want to get again a consultant of other than deals of this of W's on a regular basis toe, Look through or you toe. Look for those red flags escalation clauses in the maintenance agreements, different things that some of that deal with these contracts on a regular basis is going to see that you may not because, you know, you do this once every 5 to 10 years. Maybe it's not something you're gonna be familiar with,

spk_1:   32:23
right? I mean, because the thing is, is that the demo that that he got? Um you know, it met every everything that they needed. Um, but that's not what they're what they're receiving. So is there really any software? Uh, I mean, out of the box. And it just kind of works 100% of the functionality required. It's a simple implementation. Is there? Is there really any software that can do that? Because, I mean, you have some software, so especially some of the larger corporations that have extremely robust your piece solutions with, you know, tens or even potentially up to 100 different modules that they can just add on. Uh, is there anything that could actually fit 100%? Like, what's her go to? If if if that. If that

spk_0:   33:15
exists, Well, that's a That's a really good question, Samuel, And we do a, uh, a survey every year. And one of the questions we ask is the amount of customization or modifications that have been done to the software for people. Um, over the, you know, the whole spectrum. I think I think the number from our last survey was that only 7% of the people that bought software used it out of the box. As you say now, that would typically be like a financial package, right? Like right. Just you could only pay bills one way. Yeah, exactly. Generated Boise generate a pook. That stuff pretty standard. As soon as you start going under the production floor of your manufacturer and you're starting to look at scheduling, um, you know, there's for your service organization and you wanna, you know, create um, work orders and things like that. That's typically when you're starting to see modifications. Um, typically, what we say is, if you're looking running somewhere between, you know, 10% you know, in that territory 12%. That's an acceptable level of modification of the software. If you're modifying your 50% of the code in your software, one or two things that are occurred. One. You picked the wrong software because your requirements were done incorrectly. Or somebody's brother in law, you know, is a salesman at that company. I don't know what it is who, because that's what What's one thing that happens, Um, two is you've got such a unique company that the only way that you can put this put something together is through a hybrid solution where you're putting together a cluster are a uh that's Robert Ah, hybrid solution. Um, that's going to address all the different functional areas that you have, and it's really hard to say that you're going to put together four or five pieces of software. It's gonna do exactly what you want to have it out of the box. So again, unless you're buying QuickBooks and your you know five people, there's not much chance you're going to just get out of the box offer. It's gonna plug in.

spk_1:   35:30
Okay, so would that be like a best of breed solution where you have you know, maybe QuickBooks over here? I don't know if, uh, if that's considered in the air P or not, but you got QuickBooks and maybe 80 p and all of these different. Ah, you know, services are systems combined, and that kind of makes up your air pieces. Best of breed of all these different software says,

spk_0:   35:53
Yeah, that's that's he actually the best terminology for your you're picking the best piece of software that fits that functional application. Um, sometimes people sit there and say, Well, look, this is cheaper than buying in the RPI solution, and that may be true. In terms of licensing, the problem becomes the integration. Now, if you're gonna run him, stand alone. Really, What you've got is five different pieces of software. That's great. Except you want to try toe consolidate things. You want to get your financials out now you got a you know, export data from all these different data sources. That's not typically a real smooth process. It takes time. So normally, what you're gonna do is you're gonna have integrations written, and a lot of them will already happened. Like I say, if you're do a sales for sure somebody was God, no. Tens of thousands of the hundreds of AVS installations, they're gonna have what we call the AP eyes or integration points to that. You're gonna fit the whole lots of different pieces of software. And so the integration is not something that has to be custom written. But if it's a custom written integration that pricing and well exceed what's gonna take the implement the software, believe it or not. So that's one of the Gotsche is that we look for in statement. It works, is how maney integrations are there. You basically want to look at a you know, a Ah, a software map of what are the different pieces of software? What has to be integrated? What's the effort to be integrated? How long will it take? And that's where you usually find a lot of problems during your implementation process. If you got a lot of integration.

spk_1:   37:30
So that's eso protecting yourself. Um, you know, from like excessive charges or overruns, it really needs to be we laid out inside of your S o W. With. If you're using a system integrator, this that's what I That's what I'm gathering here.

spk_0:   37:48
Send him, and I wish I could tell you it's a simple process. It's not most of the folks we're gonna give you estimates are not going to give you the high end, they're gonna probably give you the low end. And then potentially, there could be a change order coming down. You're away. Um, one of the things that I've found that I think most the good folks do are the good poor. Best practice out there is they'll give you a range. This could take anywhere from, you know, 500 hours to 700 hours. This is the variance and costs that could could dictate. And so they're admitting up front. We really don't know exactly. Have, with this integration is going to occur. We have a pretty good idea based on requirements but being realistic, nobody can pick an exact hour, especially when it comes to integrations. They could be very problematic.

spk_1:   38:44
So if if But I I use the term excessive charges or overruns, But I mean again, being a software developer. A lot of times, things come up that are not necessarily for seen, no matter how good you plan for it. How much should a company expect in terms of, say, percentage? Should they be tolerant with it with a, uh, an overrun of cost Um, obviously, if you know, let's say they go over $10. Is that room for, you know, some kind of litigation? I would think an attorney would cost more than that. But you know, how tolerant should they

spk_0:   39:25
be? Wow, you really put up a Greek fat are Greek, uh, influence. Or there And that is to go to litigation or mediation. Whatever you want to do. When you've gotto retain an attorney one that is familiar with this type of work, they're not going to be inexpensive. So you've got to kind of make a determination of what's it worth for me actually push this issue now, As I have said earlier in the presentation, You know, if you're saying it's gonna be 10% over, just just take the 10%. Be happy somewhere in your total cost of ownership. When you when you calculated what's this entire project gonna be worth? You need to build on a contingency, and I typically say, use 20% as a contingency factor for things just like you mentioned, you know, in the requirements gathering. It didn't get mentioned or we bought another company since then, or you know, there's a number of things that can influence the scope of the implementation. But again, if it's less than 20% and you built that contingency in your covered, you've already got the money when you went for approval for the project. But, you know, if you start seeing you know anything over that now, you're starting to say that the no to the integrator or to the developer. Okay, um, this is a significant overrun, and that's when you might want to bring someone in to, say, Take a look at and say, Is that reasonable? Based upon the type of modification I'm looking for or somebody trying to make up the fact that they underbid the project to begin with, just, you know, be able to secure it. And again, that's unfortunately not in any typical process.

spk_1:   41:11
Okay, uh, I was reading a log on, and that's a that's a really good point in regards to, you know, the percentages. Ah, lot of times, um or ah blogged that I was reading. It was a story about a, uh, system integrator. It was basically saying we're not going to complete the project on time. Um, but it's not our fault. It's because of your team. And you guys didn't, you know, manage it properly or you didn't give us the time that that we needed. And typically, in S O W's, there's, ah, roles and responsibilities section inside the S O W. At least you would you would hope there is one. Um, a lot of times, you know that that doesn't dictate how much time you need actually commit to it. Um, So is that an issue where they should have included that? Is that like, one of those gouaches as well? Because when I was reading the block posted, you know, they didn't know what to do, You know, they're just like, you know, Are we our hands tied, You know, they couldn't do anything. Is that the

spk_0:   42:25
case? You know, that's that's a good question.

spk_1:   42:28
They should have contacted you. I think it's, uh well, the pacing. I

spk_0:   42:32
think they should have been realistic. Um, unfortunately, not every s o. W ever seen as our and ours because we call him roles, responsibilities, even dictated. But to your point, there really needs to be an expectation created when they put the implementation plan together. And this is typically collaboratively done between the system integrator and the client. If the system integrator just create something and says, Here's how many days it's gonna take Here's how long it's gonna take and we're gonna need these. These resource is these people at this time in that time, it could be 90% of your time and it could be 10% of my time. Well, that's a major difference, right? In terms of what is that doing to my ability to get my job done?

spk_1:   43:18
Or, more importantly,

spk_0:   43:19
yours. So I would always suggest that you want to see it least some kind of projection for each of the people on the core team where department heads or subject matter experts that may be involved in the implementation, and it's not gonna be 100% accurate. But you want to have some kind idea because typically in an implementation again, you watch your A team. You want the best people, you've got the company. Someone's got to do their jobs when they're going to be spent in 90% of their time in the design phase or whatever it iss. Um, so you wanna backfill, right? You want to either bring in somebody temporarily or you may want even hire somebody and say, Okay, you're gonna be running this area now and then we're gonna move Samuel over into this other area that deals more specifically with the RPI project or whatever it happens to be. So again, Um, yeah, You want to look for his left specificity? It's us. The look of things for us, much specific time that's been allocated as you can in the roles and Responsibilities section to try to avoid these types of problems.

spk_1:   44:30
So is that Does that kind of tie back into the, um, organizational change where they have that temporary change of responsibilities? Is that is that part of that or, um, is it completely separate?

spk_0:   44:44
Organizational changes is fairly ubiquitous. Um, it goes across the whole organization and in many different ways, it's utilized to help again keep people informed key people trained, um, make them aware, but to safer for changing rule. If we're doing roles and responsibilities, we're gonna backfill. We're going to explain to the folks what people are gonna be doing after this after the implementation. So they understand that they're not going to be put out to pasture, whatever it is. Um, so again, it's a lot about keeping people informed and also making sure that the organization is ready for implementation. That's one of the things that we look for is up front. Were people prepared for the type of time and commitment it's going to require and sometimes implementations air that could be assured a six months. But typically there more like 12 18 24 months. And if they're big jobs, maybe 45 years, that's a long run, right? So,

spk_1:   45:58
yeah, I mean, you could expect, you know, potentially even turnover in your organization. If that happens, so yeah, how do you How do you have that off?

spk_0:   46:08
You know, and that's that's what we see A lot of times is project managers burnout. When you're in the middle of a large implementation, you say you have a team of you know, 10 or 15 or in some cases it's hundreds of people working on the project, the project managers under extreme pressure. So turnover in that position is critical because when they move, obviously the new project manager that comes in doesn't know why the why the decisions that were made were made. Um, they may have a very different thought process in terms of how this project wannabe approached and that preach delays and also additional expense to the client and the client saying eight, I did fire your project manager. They left because, you know, for a number of reasons, maybe they just, you know, decided I've had it with, you know, working is off where I'm going somewhere else. But

spk_1:   47:05
I actually, personally, the reason I ask is I actually personally had that experience. It was about a week before go life, um, and their their project manager. He quit and and they brought in pain or Panorama Consulting Group to actually help them out. And they placed me on the project for their technical aspect, and I just kind of looked at me. I was like, Why did you guys go live? There's all kinds of bugs. There's all kinds of issues and there's no documentation on this. Um, I mean, eventually it took it took us, like, eight months. We turned it around, but you know, that kind of burn out. And, you know, maybe he knew that it was It was kind of fail. And he's like, I don't want to be here when when that ship sinks. So, you know, we ended up, you know, taking over that that project, um, and turning it around. But, man, it was It was a nightmare. Um, so, like, I guess the and the the implementer was like, Okay, we're go live. Go ahead and sign. This will fix the bugs that you guys have afterwards. And I tell you what that was like pulling teeth in. Ah, for somebody else who doesn't necessarily have Ah, you know, the technical expertise. How do they deal with that? How can How can somebody no. Okay. Don't trust that they're gonna just fix bugs afterwards. Shouldn't they be fixed before hand? And I can answer that question myself. Yes, they should. But what is there? Ah, something that the client could do toe to manage a a software integrator or a vendor that's pushing for that. And why would they push for that?

spk_0:   49:02
Well, they pushed for that so they could get out of it as soon as possible. Um, again, we go back to that whole fixed be not to exceed or tnm arrangement. Right when you get down to, um, situations where people have fixed fees, they want to get in and get out as soon as possible again because they have a better chance of making more profit that way. Um, I don't think I've ever seen an implementation, at least from the expert witness side that's been been done 100% 100% accurately. Otherwise they wouldn't be talking to me. But, um, I think what you need to do is one. Typically, there is a, um, what we call a trouble ticket system. I'm sure you're familiar with that. Yeah, The users are basically saying, I'm having trouble doing this. I'm having trouble doing that. When we do cases, we typically go through all of the complaint tickets and categorize them. And then there's the woods like, Well, G, did you plug in the printer? Okay, well, obviously get rid of that. That's that kind of stuff. You know, that's not an issue, but they're certainly things that are issues that come down to how the configuration or modifications were done. And to your point, I wouldn't sign off on anything that had a significant and that's the you know that's the word that you have to figure out is what's a significant impor impact the functionality. That is not something that we can live with for more than you know. It's a minor thing. Shuriken you know, like I do something manually. I could get around that for as long as I need to. It's kind of a pain in the neck, but if it's something that could potentially hold up orders or not, give us history and our customer service department to look at what the past winners have been or when we could have promised delivery of things. I would never sign off on a project like that, and I've seen it done. And once that thing signed off on, people get a lot of memory loss in terms of Well, yeah, we're gonna fix that for you. Uh, it's gonna come out the next rib of the software that it'll be fixed that I promise. So again, Um, unfortunately, there's usually a lot of pressure coming down from upstairs senior, middle level level management. They're spending a lot of money. They've made a lot of promises, and so they've got a lot of heat going on that core team saying you need to go live, you know, on X date, like we told our shareholders or whoever it is, maybe it's just the rest of the employees. But, um, I would suggest, and I would hardly suggest that if I'm a project manager and the voting is going around the table and they're saying goal, ever know Go live that you don't go live by far rather and currently expensive three months of delay than a failed implementation. One you might put the company out of business and to your reputation, obviously, is not gonna be good after something like that.

spk_1:   52:08
So that brings, uh, you know, basically what you're what you're talking about in in technical terms, is more like you 80 or user acceptance testing or or, as you put it, that the scripts, that's how important they are, Um, to work out those bugs. But before they go life correct?

spk_0:   52:27
Yeah, absolutely. It is. You're saying, you know, conference room pi pilots, which are a form of user acceptance testing. Typically, we recommend that there's three they obviously very in complexity, from specific application tomb or integrated situations to full go ahead and enter an order and do something everything you can to try to break the system, right? And so those things have to have been done, and to your point, they have to have been signed off on. That's why I call it user acceptance testing. Because user says yes, it works if you don't do that and you sit there and you're happy to vote for a go live just cause you're trying to keep the boss happy again, you're not going to make them happy after, you know, he finds out that he can't ship Waters for 10 days, He loses his best customer.

spk_1:   53:18
Yeah, definitely. Now, one of the things that ah, that happened a lot. Especially recently. It's been happening. Um, and I think it'll it'll happen. Even Mawr is, Ah, software companies, buyout software companies. Right. So you have somebody like I think it was just a couple of years ago, Orel, Coal Baht Nets week. How do those contracts? Ah, you know, transfer over typically, uh, or do they just you know, sometimes, you know, a company will purchase another company, um, just for their clientele, and they don't actually expect to use them on, you know, for them to keep their software up and running, they expect them to take those clients and put them on their platform. How do you kind of navigate, You know, something like that? I mean, it's it's a lot more difficult, you know, with a you know, with a acquiring I would think in a from a legal aspect.

spk_0:   54:22
Yeah, that's that's really a great question. This is one of the biggest issues when you're betting your doing your selection process and you you know, you you're looking at software companies that can meet the requirements that you've you know, said this is what my software last to do to be able to get me to the future state I wanted. I want to get to, um you have to look and unfortunately, this just happens to be the type of thing that again, either a panorama or a company like ours, is familiar with the road map for those different companies and what they're planning on doing. There's one and I will rename nameless, but they're famous for gobbling up pieces of software, doing exactly what you're saying. They sunset those pieces of software and say you're gonna be migrating over to our flagship product or you're gonna lose support after a period of time.

spk_1:   55:18
So what do you do as the client? What do you do?

spk_0:   55:21
You have a choice. Do I wanna live without support, which you can do, and you just basically sitting on the same piece of software. And if you've got a problem and you call and they say what version on you, you're on and you tell them they say we don't support that anymore. I'm sorry. Where you find somebody out on the market that could potentially support you or you go with the migration? Yes. Who gets to pay for the migration? They're not gonna pay for you to get your data out of the old piece of software into the new pieces off where and make any type of configurations or potential modifications. So it works in their platforms. So, um, this is something that we're dogmatic about in terms of, you know, you can't predict everything. Let's just put it that way. But again, certain companies have, um, let's put this week reputations for acquisition and pushing you on, and other people do acquisitions, and they leave him alone and, you know, eight years later, on the same pieces off where everybody's happy. But again, that's something you want someone that's in the industry. And, as you know, a very good knowledge of how those companies operate and what they've done history wise, that will tend to dictate how they're gonna operate in the future.

spk_1:   56:41
So with with that in mind, would it behoove a company to, um, maybe pad their budget with the expectation of a potential litigation that could happen Just kind of prepping that, Um And I guess, along with that, you know, it's a two part question. Should they prepped for it? You know, just kind of worst case scenario, ideology. And if if you know it doesn't happen, great. But if it does happen, you're somewhat prepared. And number two ah, what's the average cost of oven Expert witnesses. It based off of the percentage of the implementation, is that Ah, um, you know, obviously a different attorneys cost different. Uh, how is that calculated?

spk_0:   57:33
Well, it kind of runs the gamut, Samuel. Here's here's the issue. Um, if you've got a large implementation and you've spent little, it's safe. You know 30 $40 million on that implementation going out and getting legal representation from a firm that knows what they're doing. It's not gonna be It's not gonna be an inexpensive process. Um, typically expert witness, if you know when to get in a large case or larger cases, there will be an expert witness. Um, they'll run anywhere from 200 to 500 sometimes even more per hour just for the expert witness. Um, typically, we see that running around 10 maybe 15% of the total budget of the, um, legal firm to represent the client. Uh, what the client has to ascertain is, is it worth it for me to spend this much money on litigation And how strong is my case and so sometimes work up? We are. We're engaged to create just a feasibility document. How strong is your case? Was there misrepresentation? You know what things were done wrong. That air so glaring that your chances of winning your case or pretty good, Of course, you never know judges, you know, Berries, things move. But, um, again, it comes down to a potential, you know, how much can I save and how much am I going to spend to get there? So typically what you see is and this is actually a good point in the past, it used to be the two, You know, the big boys. It was, you know, Oracle s a P Microsoft. Those are the guys involved in lawsuits, not because they're good or bad or anything. They're not doing anything different than a lot of the other suffer vendors. It's just the size of the cases air such. And the money is such that it's worse someone litigating now that's moving down, as some of these tier two players are moving up into, what either the tier one space of the upper tier two space, those implementations air now starting to get a lot more expensive. So where it's not just now limited to the, you know, Big three or four. It's moving down, and we're doing cases that are definitely you wouldn't have seen. Even, you know, five years ago, you just couldn't have seen those cases come up. So, um, I guess the the answer is is kind of a consultant's depend. What are consultants? Answer is it depends Depends on how much how much you've spent and have what you think you can actually, um, recover now living with this last point with regard to that, the big thing that people always try to prove attorneys always try toe prove in a case is there's been fraud or misrepresentation in the sales process because if that's done, then it takes the the the cap. Normally, you can only super what you've lost. There's a so much, you know, there's just this is how much you can sue for ground based upon what you paid. If you can prove misrepresentation or fraud, that cap comes off and now I can see you for five times or whatever. I think I can get out of you because you fraud it. Me in that sales process. So you know, for those of us that sell things, we have to be very careful that what we say. Obviously we're always trying to put our best foot forward and look like, you know, we've got the best solution for the client, but we've got to be very careful on the The other thing I will say is, no matter what you're doing. If its internal, if its external if you're gonna put something it documented in writing, be prepared to see it show up on the courtroom screen because I've seen it many times where people have been squabbling internally about how it implementations being handled. And the next thing you know, that's discoverable document and it shows up And why some of the crazy stuff? I've seen things this. If you're going to say something bad, do it on the tote text it don't put it in writing. It's all I could say,

spk_1:   1:1:48
right, Right. So I guess the gist of it is, um, you know, don't you don't want to chase bad money with good money. Basically,

spk_0:   1:1:59
there you go. Exactly. At some point, you may just have to cut and run and say, You know what? This this thing is so bad and it's not worth the money to litigate. We're just gonna have to do it another way. That's that's typically, you know, companies like ours come in sometimes recoveries before you get the litigation, right? That's what That's the fact I was on. Yeah, Yeah. Come help me fix. And of course, the first thing you do and you probably did it. Your case was we tried to save the software, right? I try to make sure the software stays the same. And maybe we have that we can work with the system integrator. Or we might need Teoh yet another system integrator. But we try not to throw the software out because obviously, money has been spent doing that. But sometimes it comes down on the requirements were done so poorly. You just need a new piece of software and you have you got us, you know, start clean. Then you clean fresh and do it from the beginning. But again, that's that's kind of last resort. Um, you want to try and keep what you've already invested in, especially in the software. All

spk_1:   1:3:04
right, well, that's been Ah, definitely an earful. And it's been ah, educational. I mean, even as a developer, this was still educational for May, because I didn't You know, I'm not an attorney, and I don't deal a lot with the courts, so ah, you know, thank you. Definitely for your time. Bill, I think we're coming up just over the hour, but ah, definitely. Thank you for your time. And how can, um how can we reach. Reach out to to you. Ah, toe. Maybe if there's ah, listener that has an issue, how can we do that?

spk_0:   1:3:40
Well, you can, um, send a email. Obviously a request through our request through our website really is probably the best way you could just get on there and say, Hey, can I have a particular problem? Can you have somebody call me? Um, Bill Baumann is my name. Um, you can reach me at Bill that Salman b a U M a n n. It's founded via, um a n n at panorama hyphen consulting dot com. That's Panorama hyphen consulting dot com. Um, send me an email. I will. I will be happy to talk to you or re enter your email. Um, with any questions, you might have either follow ups to this presentation where if you got a specific, you know, problem with your implementation. Um, you know, I'm not going to charge you about gonna flip the flip the clock on. We'll have a discussion and see if there's something that we can either help you with or say, Hey, you know, don't bother. It's not. It's not a significant enough issue to look at potential litigation.

spk_1:   1:4:53
Perfect. Thank you so much, Bill. And this has been a panorama angle and tune in Next time. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.