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The thing about [ConsultCo] is, they have made a commitment to higher ed but
it’s much harder than . . . they thought it was going to be because they thought
we were much more like governmental than we really are . . . They have made an
investment and they continue to invest in this market but you have to wonder how
long they’re going to do that. There are only about 50 institutions that comprise
the [US] market . . .

In contrast, the project represented a major commitment for Uni in terms of time and
resources and was a substantial capital investment that was expected to have long-
term implications for their operation and governance. A project leader reflects on this
situation:
The strategic development partnership [is] a risky implementation because you
don’t know what you’re going to get – it’s dependent on a future release – you’re
not quite sure at the last minute whether your partner’s going to say ‘sorry, I can
only do five of these features’ . . . It’s almost like trying to fly a plane and you’re not
quite sure whether you’re going to land in LA or Chicago. So you’re constantly re-
charting your flight path.
When the original October 1998 deadline arrived, ConsultCo was still developing
one of the modules and decided to completely redesign the other. Their absence,
coupled with the failure to produce tangible products, lead Uni team members to
organize themselves more closely to one another and simultaneously reinterpret
their relationship with ConsultCo. Uni began considering alternative ways to achieve
its goal given its reliance on ConsultCo – what did ConsultCo want and how best
should Uni negotiate with them? It was clear that ConsultCo needed from Uni dis-
cipline expertise with regards to university grants management and Uni team mem-
bers began to realize that their modernization initiative was more complex because
of the partnership with ConsultCo due to the vendor’s need to create a marketable
product:
We’re going to have to find good ways to work together because [ConsultCo] is
committed to doing a pre-award [grant] system . . . because they want to market
this product to higher education institutions and pre-award is an important part of
the business. This is where we find we have the most duplication because we don’t
need a pre-award system. [Functional team member]
Uni had a well-respected grants management office that administered the external
funding process for faculty. Uni was happy with the current operations of this office
and their accompanying IS, however they lacked the ability to centrally manage the
way in which academic faculty budgeted and spent their award dollars. So while
Uni would have preferred to leave pre-awards out of the scope of the ERP project,
they realized that they were in an interdependent relationship with ConsultCo who
saw pre- and post-award activities as parts of the same process, both of which were
necessary to develop as part of a higher education solution that would be sold to
research institutions. Uni saw the potential to leverage their grants management
expertise in order to obligate ConsultCo for repayment to Uni sometime in the
future.

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