What an incredible debacle. Select quotes regarding their technology decisions: > "While SAP might be considered best in class, it’s an ornery, unforgiving bea

What an incredible debacle. Select quotes regarding their technology decisions: > "While SAP might be considered best in class, it’s an ornery, unforgiving beast. Sobeys introduced a version of SAP in 1996 and abandoned the effort by 2000. (It wasn’t until 2004 that the grocery chain tried again.) Similarly, Loblaws started moving to SAP in 2007 and projected three to five years to get it done. The implementation took two years longer than expected because of unreliable data in the system. Target was again seeking to do the impossible: It was going to set up and run SAP in roughly two years." > "The company wasn’t doing it alone, however, and hired Accenture (which also worked on Loblaws’ integration) as the lead consultant on the project. [...] Accenture, which Target hired as a consultant on SAP, said in a statement: “Accenture completed a successful SAP implementation for Target in Canada. The project was reviewed independently and such review concluded that there is no Accenture connection with the issues you refer to.”" > "The company had purchased a sophisticated forecasting and replenishment system made by a firm called JDA Software, but it wasn’t particularly useful at the outset, requiring years of historical data to actually provide meaningful sales forecasts." > "The depots were hampered by other factors, caused by lingering data problems and the learning curve associated with the new systems. Manhattan, the company’s warehouse software, and SAP weren’t communicating properly." > "The auto-replenishment system, which keeps track of what a store has in stock, wasn’t functioning properly, either. Like many other parts of retail, replenishment is an exacting science that can go haywire without correct data. At Target Canada, the technology relied on having the exact dimensions of every product and every shelf in order to calculate whether employees need to pull more products to fill an empty rack. Much of that data was still incorrect, and therefore the system couldn’t be relied upon to make accurate calculations." > "To add even more headaches, the point-of-sale system was malfunctioning. The self-checkouts gave incorrect change. The cash terminals took unusually long to boot up and sometimes froze. Items wouldn’t scan, or the POS returned the incorrect price. Sometimes a transaction would appear to complete, and the customer would leave the store—but the payment never actually went through. The POS package was purchased from an Israeli company called Retalix, which worked closely with Target Canada to address the issues. Progress was maddeningly slow. In 2014, a Retalix team flew to Toronto to see first-hand what Target was dealing with. After touring a store, one of the Retalix executives remarked, “I don’t understand how you’re using this,” apparently baffled the retailer managed to keep going with so many bugs. But Target didn’t have time to find a new vendor and deploy another technology. [...] Unlike SAP, Retalix is not an industry standard, and why Target chose it isn’t entirely clear." > "Like SAP, the replenishment software was brand new to Target, and the company didn’t fully understand how to use it."