Resumen
The article focuses on managing risks in enterprise systems. The experience of two companies after installing an enterprise system has been discussed. The first company survived while the other failed after installing an enterprise system. At the time of its P13 implementation, beginning in 1995, Dow Corning Corp. Incorporated was a $2.5 billion producer of silicone products. The company was facing competitive pressures as well as lawsuits worth $2 billion due to well-publicized problems with silicone breast implants. The company decided that its survival depended on reengineering its business processes to become a truly global company, an objective it believed could be met only with appropriate information systems. It created Business Processes and Information Technology to support reengineering by incorporating responsibility for business processes and IT within the same organizational unit. This scenario can be compared with FoxMeyer Drug Co.'s P13 implementation. FoxMeyer's business was wholesale drug distribution, an industry rendered very competitive and relatively unstable by health-care reforms of the early 1990s. Hoping to gain a competitive advantage, FoxMeyer initiated its $65 million P13 project in 1993. However Fox Meyer's plans did not work out. INSETS: Characteristics of ES and ES Projects; Lessons Learned.