According to McKinsey and the University of Oxford, 17% of large IT projects go so badly that they can threaten the very existence of the company, and every extra year on a project adds about 15% to its cost overrun. These four cases show how that happens.
The numbers at a glance
- £48.65M in regulatory fines, plus £32.7M redress: TSB
- ≈ €500M reportedly written off after 7 years: Lidl
- $64M of net sales it could not ship: Revlon
- £25M → £100M budget versus expected cost: Birmingham City Council
1. TSB: a bank migration that locked out customers
In April 2018 TSB migrated its customer data to a new banking platform. All of its branches and a significant share of its 5.2 million customers were hit by problems with online, mobile, telephone and branch banking, and normal service took until December 2018 to restore. UK regulators fined TSB £48.65 million in 2022 for poor planning, governance and risk management, on top of £32.7 million already paid to customers.
Lesson: Rehearse the cutover and test for real production volumes before go-live.
Source: Financial Conduct Authority, “TSB fined £48.65m for operational resilience failings” (Dec 2022)
2. Lidl: an SAP inventory project cancelled
Lidl began planning its SAP-based eLWIS inventory system in 2011 and stopped it in July 2018, returning to its legacy system. Lidl values stock at purchase price while standard SAP retail uses sales price, and the heavy customisation this required drove up cost and hurt performance. Spend was reported at around €500 million (an estimate not confirmed by Lidl or SAP).
Lesson: Settle core process differences before configuring the software.
Source: Consultancy.uk, “Lidl cancels SAP introduction having sunk €500 million into it” (Jul 2018)
3. Revlon: an SAP go-live that stopped shipments
After Revlon switched its North Carolina manufacturing plant to a new SAP ERP system in 2018, disruption left it unable to ship about $64 million of net sales to US retail customers. Its share price fell 6.4% when it disclosed the problems, and investors filed a class-action lawsuit in 2019.
Lesson: Plan go-live around production and supply-chain risk, with a fallback ready.
Sources: TechTarget, “Revlon SAP ERP problems result in rare investor lawsuit” (2019); Revlon, Inc. Form 10-K FY2019 (SEC)
4. Birmingham City Council: an Oracle ERP overrun
Birmingham’s Oracle Fusion finance and HR programme, started in 2018, was first budgeted at £25.3 million and revised to £38.7 million in 2021. By May 2023 it was expected to cost £80–100 million, while projected savings fell from £26.9 million to about £10.9 million. Reviews cited delays, cost overruns, weak controls and a product poorly suited to local government.
Lesson: Check that the product fits your sector before you sign, and keep governance independent.
Source: The Register, “Europe’s biggest council faces £100m ERP bill” (May 2023)
The takeaway
The pattern repeats: core processes that don’t fit the software, cutovers that were never fully rehearsed, and governance that spotted the risk too late. Each of these is avoidable with profiling, mock loads, reconciliation and independent oversight.
Talk to our specialists about your next migration, SAP data project or contract renewal.