Accountants and consultancy: too close for comfort?

Posted on July 2, 1997 by guydresser • Posted in Business & Money • Tagged accountancy, consultants, non-audit fees

There was a time when company directors went to management consultancies for help with the intricacies of systems selection and implementation because they offered an independent service and were not tied to any particular vendor. Nowadays that has all changed.

At the corporate level there can be few major management consultancies, or even systems integrators, for that matter, who have not leapt into bed with the enterprise system developers such as SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Baan and others. Continue reading →

Control is the key to preventing IT disasters

Posted on November 15, 1996 by guydresser • Posted in Business & Money • Tagged IT management, run-away projects

Reports of information systems projects going belly-up have become all too common in recent years. The biggest failures are household names: the London Stock Exchange, the London Ambulance Service and Wessex Regional Health Authority to name just three.

Yet for every big-name cock-up, there are many dozens of small projects that do not work out as their sponsors intended. According to Arthur Andersen partner Paul Williams, the chief reason for this is poor project management. Continue reading →