Core Optimization pause a harbinger of larger layoffs ahead. All the employees seconded to the project will have to be re-absorbed back into their groups creating an excess number of employees that will need to be trimmed. Anybody know what really went on to put the kibosh on the project?
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I wasn’t involved in any of the ERP projects but from my understanding:
- The 2019/2020 ERP project referred to was the legacy Cenovus project to replace JDE which was at the end of its support life. SAP was selected as the successor to JDE and this project commenced prior to the acquisition of Husky Energy.
- Prior to being acquired, Legacy Husky was in the process of upgrading their SAP ECC system to SAP S4HANA. This was a phased approach spanning years which would have ECC and S4HANA running concurrently during the transition.
- In late-2020, Cenovus acquires Husky. It is decided shortly after that Cenovus would cancel its SAP implementation in favour of migrating over to Husky’s SAP installation. The Husky SAP ECC to S4HANA transition was put on pause or was already on-pause to allow for the work of moving legacy Cenovus systems over to legacy Husky systems known as the Core Integration project.
- The Core Optimization project was to complete the SAP ECC to SAP S4HANA transition, clean-up master data as well as improve workflows. This maybe was too ambitious and should have been phased better, someone from the project management team would have to chime in, everyone working within their silos seemed to think the project was moving along nicely.
I would have to assume some things would have been learned from prior legacy Husky and Cenovus ERP projects but obviously not enough. I’d be curious to find out specifically why Husky’s initial attempt to transition from ECC to S4HANA stalled out.
Who cares, it’s just another project. Move on to the next one.
Let’s be totally clear here. I guarantee you Cenovus and its leaders will not take a single learning away from this catastrophe. Epic fail in mgmt and control. And not one person will be held accountable that’s 100% for sure.
The cancelation of this project continues to baffle and is a shock to those directly and indirectly associated with it. Agree with many of the comments made here.
The project was allowed to hire as many people as they needed. Although they are not considered layoffs, approx 500 independent contractors and service providers were released on the same day, and approx 35 vendor contracts were terminated. They were all there to make this monumental project a success, and they mattered too.
The reigns could have been tightened, and there were other levers that could have been pulled. With stronger leadership, this project could have been saved. It's not like someone can just come in and pickup where we left off.
This project was poorly managed from the beginning and accountability for this has to lie at the feet of the executive team. The project missed an important gate and at no point from that miss to the project pause was there any direction to stop work and lower the burn rate. Consulting firms were billing freely with very little accountability. Then a senior executive was brought in to right the ship and to lead outsourcing the risk of this program a consulting partner. While her bio is impressive her experience in leading this type of program is lacking and she didn’t build confidence in her ability to manage the program. She partnered with her preferred consultants to spend more money and was still unable to rightsize the project. All this to say that the really solid employees and independents on the project were never utilized fully as others with large egos thought they had solutions but they forgot to speak with the experts on the program. There are so many lessons could be learned from this experience but I don’t see any appetite for that from the team left holding the bag for rescoping this program.
Too many consultants on the project more keen on maximizing their fees rather than seeing the project succeed.
But let’s be clear here there are some basic questions. Someone has wasted probably close to $100M right?
- Who started this project and who signed off on it ?
- How much of shareholder dollars have actually been spent?
- Who at the top is going to be held accountable for this waste?
Senior people’s bonuses should be impacted by this massive waste of money and resources. But we know Jon is not big on accountability when the mistakes are at the top, I mean just look at our stock price. They preach responsibility but who wants to bet no one is held responsible in this case.
Anyone brainless enough to sign up to be seconded for CORE ought to be fired. Most people knew better and avoided it like the plague. We’ve seen this happen too many times in Calgary.
Yes the seconded employees have a guaranteed placement back at their home sites and it will definitely impact current site employees that will be eliminated by redundancy. Many sites are taking the opportunity to realign certain areas based on this change.
Someone did an earned value calculation and realized it was going to cost (do your best Dr. Evil voice) 1 billion dollars!