Skip to content
ERP LEADERS
Get issue 01 Room
Get issue 01

Enterprise software, read for what it costs and who signs for it.

Software business

Asda budgeted £800m. The bill came to £1,224m.

Project Future separated the UK's third largest supermarket from Walmart's systems and put it on SAP S/4HANA hosted in Microsoft Azure, live in January 2024.

ERP LEADERS news desk · · First reported by The Register · Edition no. 1

Cumulative cash outflow to 31 December 2025: £1,224 million. Exceptional costs in 2025 alone: £284 million.

Most large programmes overspend. Very few get an explanation this direct from the chairman:

"The downturn in sales and to a degree the market share issue is totally driven by Future, it's not driven by any competitive activity."

That is Allan Leighton telling the market that the ERP programme, and nothing a competitor did, moved Asda's market share. He called the IT problems totally self-inflicted and gave three reasons: poor integration, insufficient testing, and a lack of capacity planning.

None of the three is a technical decision. All three were settled in governance meetings months before anybody logged into the new system.

Which of the three would an honest review find in your programme this morning?

Sources

Spotted an error? Tell us. Every correction is logged on Standards.

Your reading room

Companies in this story
SAPMicrosoft

Our file on SAP

  1. 20 SeptFiled later

    SAP's chief executive said voice replaces much data entry in three years.

  2. 19 SeptFiled later

    KPMG cut jobs in its SAP and AI teams. Partners averaged £880,000.

  3. 17 SeptFiled later

    Broadcom raised VMware prices by 10x or more, European cloud providers say.

  4. 17 SeptFiled later

    Grocery Outlet's SAP launch cut gross margin by almost 2 points.

  5. 11 SeptFiled later

    Zeiss dropped the clean rebuild of its SAP after about €200 million.

All 18 SAP stories

For your next steering committee

Questions for your own programme. They are not findings about any company in this story.

  1. 1Ask for the approved budget and the current forecast on the same scope, side by side.
  2. 2Ask which costs sit outside the programme budget today: internal staff, data migration, parallel running.
  3. 3Ask who may approve the next increase, and at what amount the programme goes back to the board.

Issue 01 of the ERP LEADERS brief puts a timeline, the three-number review and six questions on one page. Read issue 01

Founding reader view is on in this browser. It is a reading view, not secure access. Print the working sheet

Founding reader

Welcome back. · Issue 01

8 comments on LinkedInRead the discussion

Keep reading

The ERP LEADERS brief Get issue 01