Recently, I extended one of my visits to Toronto to take in some city sites. To get the best bang for my tourist buck, I decided to participate in one of those cliché bus tours and when it arrived at this breathtaking, vast, awesome and very old castle, I was moved to have a closer look.
Turns out, I was at the famed Casa Loma, built by Sir Henry Pellatt at the beginning of the 20th century.
I learned a lot from the tour guide that day – Sir Henry Pellatt was an entrepreneurial dreamer and a business visionary; in 1883, he founded the Toronto Electric Light Company; a decade later, he purchased stock in the Canadian Pacific Railroad and at the turn of the century, he won the rights to build the first Canadian hydro-generating plant at Niagara Falls. By 1911, he had amassed $17 million.
Next, Pellatt set his sights on building his dream castle.
Here’s what I learned.
Customizations, maintenance costs and upgrades put you at considerable financial risk – whether you’re building a castle, or a workforce management system.
Consider that much of Pellatt’s castle was never even completed – does that sound familiar?
Too many enterprise clients initiate deployment, can’t meet deadlines, encounter unexpected glitches and end up throwing certain elements into phase 2 of the project, which is never executed, leaving them with a half-baked system.
Or a half-baked castle, in Pellatt’s case.
Casa Loma, even to this day, is in constant need of maintenance and upgrades. If you don’t address outdated architecture or decrepit systems, the infrastructure will fail.
With a modern and newly built condominium, your monthly fee covers the cost of any upgrade or maintenance required. It’s a stress-free alternative…much like the cloud!
The strain of maintaining Pellatt’s large castle led him to make further ill-advised real estate investments that were ultimately unsuccessful.
The Province expropriated Pellatt’s electrical power generating business, and his aircraft manufacturing business was later taken over as part of the war effort during World War I. These challenges led to his near bankruptcy and he was eventually forced to leave Casa Loma.
Sir Henry Pellatt, virtually penniless, spent his final days at his chauffeur’s home in the Toronto suburb of Mimico where he died.
The deployment of Casa Loma was catastrophic. If Pellatt had:
- Planned more strategically
- Avoided out-of-control projects
- Budgeted more carefully
- Been realistic about the deliverables
The integrity of his architecture would have been maintained.
Similarly, a bad ERP implementation can bankrupt you. If you don’t execute strategically from the start, you will end up with a dysfunctional system that is doomed to fail.
You need to seek the support and expertise of an experienced consulting and implementation company to ensure that your deployment is seamless, optimized and successful.
