Lots of companies have been sold erp sap programs by slick salesmen who are promoting bells and whistles, making it sound great, but they don’t do the kind of investigation needed to avoid major problems down the line.

Failures have occurred at all types of companies using ERP software from a wide variety of marketers including Germany’s SAP AG, Baan Co. of the Netherlands and Virginia, California-based PeopleSoft Inc. and Oracle Corp., but consultants say the software — encompassing all business processes except, in most cases, e-mail and office applications — is rarely to blame.

Consultants also say failures often begin when companies rush into ERP solutions, vastly underestimating the culture shock involved when a company tries to turn a jumble of disparate processes into one giant brain sharing all its information simultaneously.