SYMANTEC ERP’s TURMOIL

AN ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION OF IMPLEMENTATION OF ITS ERP
SYSYTEMS

MANAGEMENT INFORMATION COURSE WORK ASSIGNMENT

BY

OLUSADE PAUL-ROTUA (0714480)

April 21, 2010

Symantec Corporation was established in 1980 and is a leading software vendor specializing in security and information management with operations in 40 countries and 17,500 employees. Since inception Symantec has grown by acquiring companies like Norton, Brightmail, Altris and other smaller software developers. The company made its largest acquisition to date in 2005, when it acquired Veritas Software for approximately $13.5 billion. Though both organisations were of similar sizes Symantec’s focus was security and information management for
Project Oasis would have fared better if it had combined the socio technical approaches of ETHICS (focused on job satisfaction and end user participation) with SSM (aimed at identifying stakeholders, actively including representatives from the stakeholder community to achieve a cultural consensus at the outset of any information system project) and SDLC (the technique of business information systems based on structured sequential stages of development). This combination would ensure that technology aligns closely with the prevailing social and organisational factors within the business environment (Elliot 2004).
The inability to coordinate the development of its new ERP system with the launch of other products from different divisions reveals that the projects were not properly managed. The key project management success factors according to Feeny & McMullen (1995) include; top management support, selection of a recognised project champion, clearly defined project goals, selection of a project team, clearly defined end-users’ needs, clearly defined business requirements, stakeholder involvement and management of user expectations.

An ERP process in addition to being a project is also a change and transformation process and Clemons (1995) identified five groups of risks which are inherent in