[LINK] QANTAS moving IT staff to India. Any ACS response??

[Adam Todd]

At 09:57 AM 10/02/2007, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>Adam Todd wrote:
>>At 05:51 PM 9/02/2007, steve jenkin wrote:
>>
>>What do you expect!  Aussie IT people, most of them anyway, aren't real 
>>IT people.  They are "Drag and Droppers" and the result is, the best IT 
>>people aren't working in the country (or for the ocuntry) any more.
>
>In this particular case it wasn't the fault of the IT people. Qantas made 
>a business decision to purchase Oracle software for HR and Finance. and 
>implement with minimum customisation.
>
>The HR system was implemented OK, although there was more customisation 
>than expected.
>
>When it came to the financial system, the Qantas finance management had 
>changed and did not agree with the minimum customisation decision. So the 
>IT people were forced to make major changes to a system that was supposed 
>to be "off the shelf". It is a classic case of changing business 
>requirements and then blaming IT for not delivering.
>
>Qantas would not accept the new development timetable and so threw out the 
>IT developers. They've been making a mess of eQ ever since, but it's not 
>an IT problem, its a business led disaster.

Sounds to me more like IT people making "off the shelf" package selection 
from the lunches and dinners they were taken on by the vendors, and then 
the Management doing what happens in companies all the time - evolves.

Instead of having a database and IT system that can adapt and be modified 
quickly with knowledgeable people on the floor, it seems reliance was on 
the vendor to supply and modify the package as required.

If you want custom solutions, then you have to have internal staff who can 
manage that process.

I fail to understand why companies of this nature keep wanting to buy 
"generic" solutions that any SoHo would use as the basis of "being cost 
effective and we'll modify it as we go along."

It's cheaper to employ a strong IT department that has programming 
knowledge, ability to deliver and the ability to support.  Especially the 
size of Qantas.

They dug their own hole by employing IT people who aren't, by the sounds of 
it, anything more than "Insert Disk and press enter"

<sigh>

If Qantas wants to discuss a project development with me, I'm more than 
happy to talk, it won't cost them $200 million, (or even remotely in the 
area of) but it will ensure that they can change what they need to as the 
business continues to evolve.

Who knows, might need to pull in a few Linkers to bring it all together :)