PA Consulting Group today launches the results of their International Millennium Bomb survey conducted in September/October 1997, with approximately 1000 public and private sector organisations in 15 countries. This is the fourth in a series of Millennium surveys from PA.
The PA survey reveals that whilst awareness amongst IT professionals is high (87%), the message still isn’t getting through to senior management. On average only 55% are perceived to be fully aware of the implications and therefore of the likely costs involved. In Continental Europe this figure is even lower.
Senior management involvement and backing is critical if Millennium is to become a top priority project and get sufficient funding and resources.
Around a half of organisations surveyed have yet to put a formal year 2000 programme in place. As a result significant numbers of organisations are unable to give a clear indication of the scale of their projects:
- 42% unable to estimate the number of man-years required
- 44% have not included 'embedded systems'
- 29% unable to estimate cost of the Millennium programme
- 26% unable to say how they plan to resource their Millennium programme.
Given that 68% of organisations expected to be impacted by the problem before the year 2000 and approximately half of those surveyed will feel the impact in 1998, it is of particular concern that so many organisations have failed to take any formal action. It is PA’s opinion that many of these organisations will fail to fix the problem in time, and it is likely that severe disruption to normal business operations will occur as a result (ie inability to process orders, transactions, calculate payments and so on).
The survey also indicates that organisations who are tackling the problem are finding it costing more than they first estimated: The total cost of the Millennium programme for those organisations who were able to estimate is US$4.7 billion (local equivalent) with an average cost of US$6.9 million (local equivalent) to each organisation.
On average, it will take 56 man-years of effort for each organisation to fix their Millennium problem. This figure escalates to 181 man-years for organisations with a turnover in excess of US$1000M. (local equivalent).
44% of planned human resource is going to have to be obtained externally. The widely held industry view that a skills shortage is beginning to occur is substantiated by this finding. This projected demand will be extremely difficult to satisfy and those organisations who still do not know how much effort will be required, will find themselves competing for technical and project management skills in an increasingly fierce market.
Smaller organisations are lagging behind – both in terms of awareness and action
When the data is viewed by organisational turnover it is clear that smaller organisations are faring even less well in addressing and understanding the problem:
- Only 43% of senior managers are aware of the problem in smaller organisations, as compared to 73% in the largest organisations
- Only 37% of smaller organisations have a Millennium programme plan in place, as compared to 79% of the largest organisations.
Mr Eddie Sung, Country Manager of PA Consulting Group, Singapore said: "Organisations must recognise the magnitude of this problem. To solve it requires extensive project management experience, and financial and human resource. Our experiences indicate that organisations who are tackling the problem are consistently finding that it is far more complex than originally thought. PA urges all organisations to act now."
