Bruce White wrote:

>In our world we also have to whether the technology has
the capability to meet our requirements and whether the
organization/culture is ready for it among other challenges of course.

So true - one of the issues I've raised in the past is whether the
organization has the stability to be able to implement and maintain a given
technology over time (to be honest, while not following the details, this
was the first question that occurred to me regarding SAP/California -
California has been notorious for its lack of stable or sufficient funding,
and  - you are correct - SAP is a complex undertaking). Its hard to bring
your A-Team to the table if they keep getting reorganized, cut back,
re-assigned, etc....

Unfortunately, most organizations are not willing to acknowledge the degree
to which instability may impact the longer term prospects of a given
project, and many contractors are not entirely forthcoming on on-going
maintenance issues (in fact I've seen a bit of collusion in some of these
projects, where the organization's employees see that maintenance need as
assurance of long term employment/empire building; the contractor as long
term profit).

In these kinds of environments, I honestly believe that records management
has a unique perspective - a long range view. If the records generated by a
given system pass the stability "life-cycle" test (and almost all of these
systems have a records keeping component), that may reflect well on the
sustainability of the system itself in a given organization, particularly
in a climate of  continual "creative destruction".

-- 
Dwight Wallis, CRM
Multnomah County Records Management & Distribution Services Manager
1620 SE 190th Avenue
Portland, OR 97233
ph: Records- (503)988-3741
ph: Distribution - (503)988-3533, x29131
cell: (503)260-2263
fax: (503)988-3754
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