The Hertz Corporation has sued Accenture for a failed “Digital Transformation Program”. I was going thru the detailed complaint with Alan Pelz-Sharpe and it is a fascinating read.
Seems like a “project management 101” level disaster.
Issues mentioned include:
– delays in delivery
– Deliverables not as per agreement
– Usability issues
– Standards not followed
– Untrained resources
– Best practices of content management systems not followed
– Bad project management
– Design not as per spec
– Spiraling costs
– etc
To be honest, many of the points mentioned are unbelievable. I mean, in 2019, things like “responsive web site” or a tablet-friendly website should be a default. No?
So i am not believing everything, not yet at least and would love to hear what Accenture says. But here is what Alan said in a recent TechTarget article regarding the lawsuit:
While the Hertz complaint only shows the rental car company’s side of the argument, typically the problems begin when consultants — who aren’t content experts and tend to default to Adobe products — focus on the app’s front end at the expense of retooling the back-end systems delivering the content, said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder of the research firm Deep Analysis.
“Overhauling and modernizing legacy web and commerce systems, particularly those with multiple geographies, products and sites is very difficult indeed,” Pelz-Sharpe said, adding that the Adobe products aren’t the problem, but rather the free-form evolution of a company’s legacy web CMS that can’t just be quickly ripped and replaced. “Web content provides unique challenges as it is, not so much in the form of files; rather, it is made up of strings, links and items of data that have to be assembled dynamically.”
These projects are a “nightmare,” Pelz-Sharpe said, adding that jumping in with an army of consultants can cause more damage than benefit. A slower and better approach can be tackling one piece of the back-end system — and one body of content — at a time. This may require recreating content where necessary, unraveling unnecessary workflows and simplifying the process.