Wipro Agrees to Pay Settlement Fee over Botched SAP Implementation

Indian software consultancy Wipro has been hit with a settlement fee of $75 million after a botched SAP implementation for the US National Grid at the end of last year. The project to upgrade the organisation’s legacy system, many of which were run on Oracle software, began in 2008. After initially selecting Deloitte as its lead implementation partner, project manager and systems integrator, the National Grid switched to Ernst and Young in the first two roles and selected Wipro to handle systems integration. However, according to the complaint the submitted into the US District Court, defects were discovered in the supply chain, payroll, accounting and reporting systems immediately after they went live. The US National Grid’s filing claimed that the new system “miscalculated time, pay rates and reimbursements, so that employees were paid too little, too much or nothing at all.” Oral arguments in the case were due to be heard in the New York Eastern District Court on Wednesday (8 August), but this weekend Wipro revealed the companies had settled the case out of court.