[some_guy_in_ca]

I've spent my entire 30 career in ERP Consulting (PeopleSoft), working with Payroll, Accounting, and Student management systems.

I have a current client that is a mirror of this exactly. They had one new executive go to a sales demo, and the sales guy told him it would be "live" in a few months, and he believed it. It was so laughable and downright embarrassing for the client. In this case, I know it is at least a 3-year project if you have competent team members and vendors. It also depends on how you define "success" and how many business processes you are willing to break. However, these can stretch into 5 year projects when you are working with mission critical systems running accounting and payroll. In those cases, you cannot move fast and break things.

Most organizations don't have competent teams, and the vendors are often made up of low-skilled offshore workers, which makes nuanced, complex projects very complicated. The sales side will promise the world then the implementation team is low skilled and underdelivers.

I have seen this with several other clients, replacing pieces of PeopleSoft modules with different applications. Sometimes they come back and sometimes they just suffer through it and then find a third option after the new system fails to deliver.

Most ERP systems are just CRUD systems. So, you end up with a working CRUD system being replaced by a new CRUD system. The old system had its strengths and weaknesses. The new system will solve some problems and break others.

You spend 3-5 years replacing a system only to end up in the same place you were before: A CRUD system. This is maddening unless you are the new vendor and getting enriched.