Tonight, weâre dimming the lights, firing up the dashboards, and summoning the ghosts of ERP projects past.
These arenât myths or campfire talesâthese are real stories of transformation gone terrifyingly wrong.
From candy empires losing millions to courtroom dramas and billion-dollar payroll nightmares, weâre pulling back the curtain on what happens when strategy slips, testing is skipped, or timelines turn monstrous.
But donât worryâthis isnât just to spook you.
Every ERP horror story hides a valuable lesson in project discipline, governance, and timing.
So grab your flashlight (or your favorite BI dashboard glow) and join us for the first of these real-life scary ERP stories:
The Hershey Nightmare
In the late 1990s, Hershey Foods CorporationâAmericaâs iconic chocolate makerâwas ready for modernization. The company wanted to streamline its supply chain, modernize customer orders, and integrate multiple legacy systems into one single, efficient ERP environment.
The plan? A $112 million project combining SAP R/3, Siebel CRM, and Manugistics SCM.
The goal? Perfect synchronization from cocoa bean to candy bar.
But as every horror story begins⌠the timing couldnât have been worse.
The Rush to Go Live
Hersheyâs leadership wanted the new system live before Y2K and, crucially, before the Halloween and Christmas candy rushâtheir busiest seasons.
The problem?
A project scheduled for 48 months was squeezed into 30 months.
Testing and training phases were drastically shortened.
Despite warnings from consultants, Hershey pushed ahead.
In July 1999, just months before Halloween, the switch was flipped.
The Horror Unfolds
At first, everything seemed fineâuntil the orders started coming in.
Warehouses were full of candy.
Customers were placing orders.
But the system⌠froze.
Distribution modules glitched. Orders couldnât be matched to shipments. The integration between SAP and Manugistics collapsed under load.
By September, Hershey couldnât fulfill $100 million worth of ordersâeven though all the candy was literally sitting in its warehouses.
According to Pemeco Consultingâs detailed case study:
âHersheyâs ERP system failed to communicate between order processing, inventory, and logistics modules, effectively paralyzing fulfillment.â
(Pemeco Case Study)
The Fallout
By Halloween 1999, shelves were empty. Distributors were furious. Retailers reported shortages of Reeseâs and KitKats.
The financials were brutal:
- $100 million in lost sales
- 19% drop in quarterly profits
- 8% fall in stock price within weeks
The ERP rollout became the stuff of boardroom nightmares.
Why It Failed
Experts later identified three critical mistakes:
Rushed timeline. Compressing testing meant integration bugs went undiscovered.
Poor change management. Staff werenât properly trained, creating confusion on the floor.
Bad go-live timing. Launching during peak season was a fatal decision.
The Aftermath
It took Hershey nearly a year to stabilize operations. Subsequent reports revealed that the system did eventually deliver improvementsâbut only after months of manual intervention and rework.
Hersheyâs experience became one of the most cited cautionary tales in ERP education, reminding executives that technology projects arenât just ITâtheyâre business lifelines.
Lessons from the Candy Catastrophe
- ERP success depends on discipline, not deadlines.
- Test, test, and test again.
- Never go live when your business can least afford a failure.
Conclusion
The Hershey ERP nightmare is a bittersweet storyâproof that even global brands can be undone by poor timing and overconfidence.
Because in ERP, itâs not the ghosts you donât see that haunt youâitâs the ones you ignore.
Sources
- Pemeco Consulting â A Case Study on Hersheyâs ERP Implementation Failure
https://pemeco.com/a-case-study-on-hersheys-erp-implementation-failure-the-importance-of-testing-and-scheduling/ - CIO Magazine â Supply Chain: Hersheyâs Bittersweet Lesson | CIO
đŻď¸ And with that⌠our ERP Horror Stories come to an end đ
The lights flicker back on, the ghosts of failed go-lives fade into the server logs, and weâre left with three chilling reminders from the dark side of digital transformation:
đŤ The Hershey Nightmare â Never rush what must be tested.
âď¸ The Waste Management Trial â Governance is your holy water.
𩸠The Queensland Payroll Disaster â Listen to your warnings, or prepare for the haunting.
Each tale leaves behind a simple truth:
ERP success isnât just about software â itâs about discipline, timing, and respect for the process.
At Synovia Digital, we donât just exorcise system demons â
we build transformations that donât need a resurrection later.
So as you step away from the flickering screen tonight, remember:
test early, govern wisely, and never, ever say âgo-liveâ three times in a row without a rollback plan. đť
Happy Halloween from your friends at Synovia Digital!