Migration to SAP from U2 Causes Bankruptcy of Company

Jewelry retailer Shane Co. attributed its bankruptcy partly to a new inventory-management system that cost four times as much as expected and led it to overstock, according to documents filed by the Centennial-based company...The final blow to the company was a point-of-sale and inventory management system purchased from business-software giant SAP for $8 million to $10 million, which ended up costing $36 million and took three times as long to implement. In the meantime, because it did not work entirely, the system did not provide accurate inventory numbers and led to the chain being substantially overstocked in the fall of 2007. "

The abbreviated backstory is that the Shane Co ran software in the early 1980's on Prime Information. When Prime went out of business in 1988, they ported their system to Universe . The Shane Co spent many years developing extending those and other applications in BASIC. This software ran their business successfully for over many many years. Management made the decision to go the SAP from Universe and the result, as they say, was catastrophic.

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