$228M Blown on Customizing Salesforce

When will we learn?

We've all seen it before, but it doesn't make it any easier to watch, especially when it's our hard-earned tax dollar going up in smoke.

It's the old "buy & customise to within an inch of its life" story we've all heard before. Yet we keep making the mistake.. using vendor platforms like Salesforce as a software development tool.

I'm referring to the Federal Government's ongoing blow-out trying to customise Saleforce in support of the Aged Care Act.

In summary:

• 8x blowout by Accenture ($18M -> $157M)
• 3x blowout by Salesforce ($11M -> $34M)
• 2x blowout by Capgemini ($37M -> $74M)

A Nonprofit CEO's View

A nonprofit CEO reached out to me with his views, which I think summarise the day-to-day reality perfectly:

It’s quite disheartening to see these massive blowouts, especially when they impact charitable sector, where resources are critically needed.

I have indeed experienced similar frustrations. I've been involved on and off with a committee implementing Salesforce since 2016 for a charitable organisation in Queensland and nationally, and despite our best efforts, we're still not significantly better off than when we started in some states. The problem seems to be a combination of the complexity of customisations and what you aptly referred to as the "get your foot in the door" approach by some providers.

In our case, we've repeatedly fallen into the trap of engaging the same providers to "fix" the problems, often at significant cost, only to encounter new issues whenever updates are rolled out. This cycle has often felt like a classic case of the sunk cost fallacy—continuing to invest in a problematic solution because of the substantial time and money already spent, rather than cutting losses and exploring new options.

I've noticed that many charities face similar challenges. The customisations, while intended to tailor the platform to specific needs, often lead to a tangled web of dependencies and workarounds. And every update seems to break something that was just fixed. The reliance on certain providers for ongoing support also means we are frequently locked into costly arrangements without ever reaching a satisfactory outcome.

Far from over

And it’s far from over:

"But what we also know is that the system for registering these contracts is incomplete, and there is in all likelihood a lot more money flowing into people's pockets that we just cannot see."

As a taxpayer, it’s frustrating that no public servant ever loses their job over these things, yet they happen routinely, year aftere year, for decades.

And these are just the projects that get completed—there are plenty more that are halted after massive overruns.

But there's no other way .. is there?

Rubbish.

The technical approaches for avoiding these mass vendor customisations have been around since the 90's.

It's about keeping customisations away from the vendor platform and using instead free and ubiquitous technologies for our own unique bits. These are the same proven technologies that power the internet.

The result is the same, you still have customisations - but the big difference is that you're not paying anyone to manage those customisations for you, they're free in comparison. Even if you get another partner to manage this as a service, you're looking at a fraction of the cost. If you're interested I can provide like-for-like financial comparisons based on some successful project rescues I've worked on.

The second benefit is that your customisations are interacting with the vendor software (Saleforce in this case) at arm's length instead of being woven into the fabric of their product. This means you can upgrade the vendor sofware without breaking your customisations.

Why we keep making the same mistake

The issue is that no one with a significant marketing budget makes money from these approaches.

CEOs get their advice from the big consultancies, not from the small outfits who are more likely to care about the outcome.

The consultancies tie themselves to vendors like Saleforce for perfectly defensible reasons (in terms of their shareholders, not taxpayers of course). It's not in the interests of their shareholders to put their customisations on free and ubiquitous technologies.

It's difficult for a CEO to judge the relative merits of these approaches, they're going to go with the (emotionally) low-risk option of "no one gets fired for hiring IBM".

It's all totally understandable, but as Albert Einstein is (possibly incorrectly) quoted:

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Sometimes we need the emotional courage to try something different, as hard as it is.