In defence of IM
I was going to stay lurking until Carnage Matey tried to blame EWS on IM.
IM Engineering were thown out by the same Director of Engineering who wanted the SAP system because he didn't understand the existing (now known as Legacy) system.
The original EWS project was insigated and managed by Engineering people who brought in a large number of external contractors.
These contractors had the original plan of unloading an IMS database which needs a heafty mainframe to support it into an Access database on a PC.
IM might not be the best respected department, but I think it very unfair to lay the blame for EWS on IM.