"I think these days everyone is saying that is too hard and it takes too long to make changes and enhancements, the market is moving too fast so you will always be behind the game.

While these big IT transformations are going on you should dissemble the sky scrapper and build suburbs of houses instead where it is easier to knock one over and start again." "Coming off a [major IT transformation] is not an easy task for anyone," Presence of IT Oracle practice manager, Duane Thompson, said.

"How do you break that down into components you can then go and deploy? How can you use those components and have them interact to build flexibility into your organisation? Can you look at your people and talent [management] or finance or banking as separate areas and use middleware integration in between to tie it all together?"

Hughes said that Oracle's recommend approach for existing customers looking to avoid big IT overhauls was to take adding on new IT capabilities -- and moving to the vendor's new Fusion apps -- in three steps: upgrade, optimise, and extend.