You have almost certainly either experienced this before or know someone who has. A change in leadership takes place in some part of a company you know. Your company had been using business software brand X for that area of the organization and the new leadership now wants brand y, believing and/or claiming it will fix or address all the outstanding issues in that area of the business. Perhaps they were using Microsoft Dynamics for a CRM and now the new VP of Sales want to go with SalesForce.com. Or Finance was using SAP and now the new CFO wants Oracle. This happens when IT leadership changes as well. Cisco gets replaced with Juniper. Dell with HP. And on and on.

The cost associated with such technology changes often is large and generally under estimated. Costs like retraining, especially sufficient ongoing training to replace hard earned experience, is often omitted. What drives such changes? Most often it is fundamentally a lack of understanding of information technology systems. Most people equate any information technology corporate system with their personal consumer technology experiences. Having problems with your coffee maker in your home then just run out and buy a different brand from your local big box store. It is human nature to try to relate personal experience to larger, more complex technology decisions. Personal retraining is also an issue. Having learned SalesForce.com previously in a person's career, it is also natural to not want to go through the effort to learn a new tool. It can seem easier to have the tool changed to what you know.

These case are failure in reasoned data driven leadership. Even rudimentary costs analyses will generally show the cost of training and support to resolve any issues apparently present in existing systems is significantly less than costs to replace and retrain. This is even more notable when lost productivity in the business area while people get used to a new system is factored in. Invest in regular training and refresher training for new and existing employees. Utilize established support contracts and regular vendor reviews to resolve any open issues with current technology. Wholesale replacement of a brand of technology should be an action of last recourse.