Nike I2

Q: What characteristics about Nike contributed to their troubles with i2 becoming nothing more than a speed bump?

1. i2's predictive demand application and its supply chain planner used different business rules and stored data in different formats, making it difficult to integrate the two applications. The i2 software needed to be so heavily customized to operate with Nike's legacy systems that it took as much as a minute for a single entry to be recorded by the software. And, overwhelmed by the tens of millions of product numbers Nike used, the system frequently crashed..

2. Nike did not hire a third-party integrator although the company was replacing an already troublesome older application with a new supply chain planning application. Since Nike as a company was not a professional in software, they could have hired a third party integrator for efficient and faultless implementation of the software.

3. The implementation of software

should have assessed the utility versus desired results. Nike could have done a stage wise deployment of software and with minimized customization.