Kennametal, Haworth, Dana Holding, and Others: ERPs get the second lease on life

Kennametal’s chief information officer complains that they “Paid maintenance for nothing.” Who do you think is responsible for that state of affairs? Kennametal, the ERP vendor, or both? Justify your answer.

After reading the case study, I have come to conclude that Kennametal did not effectively managed their ERP system. They could have relied less on the automated updates of the system and appointed some staff member from the IT department to learn more about the ERP software and adopt it according to their company needs. The ERP was paid to also offer updates and it did offer these updates. These automated updates made Kennametal think that they can set back and relax up till the time they started to problems with the software. This is where they started to complain about the ERP. Also, when you buy a software, you always get technical support when you have issues from the software company. I did not see Kennametal asking for technical support from the company. It seems that Kennametal was not ready for errors and issues with the software and when they were encountered with them, they simply start to blame the software developers.

Second Opinion

Kennametal and the ERP vendor, both are responsible for the state of affairs. Kennametal declared that they “paid maintenance for nothing” but the actual services were delivered by the vendor of ERP. Though the services that they provided were not at the satisfaction level. In this case, Kennametal needs to list all the needs and requirements before working with the ERP vendor. In this, Kennametal should not rely on the ERP vendor at the very start and should verify the software whether it is matching with the needs and requirements or not. After signing the agreement with the ERP vendor, Kennametal should not cancel their agreement and stop the payments because the verification part should be done before the agreement procedure. It is not fair to stop all the link that is growing with the company from years. To acquire the new technology in the company, Kennametal could have asked his employee to work on ERP in order to avoid the complexities and it could be beneficial and efficient for the company as well.