IT & ERP Implementation Failure Expert Witness

Specialties & Experience of this Expert Witness

Additional Information

Bernadette Gratton is a technology executive and expert witness with deep, hands-on expertise in ERP implementation lifecycle management, IT project governance, and implementation failure analysis. With a career spanning enterprise technology environments across Higher Education, healthcare, and enterprise SaaS — from on-premises deployments through modern cloud environments — she brings a practitioner's perspective that is both historically grounded and current, with command of what successful implementations look like and precisely where and why they fail. Her expert witness work focuses on ERP and IT implementation failures, including vendor misrepresentation, scope mismanagement, data migration errors, inadequate change management, breach of contract, and failure to meet industry-standard project governance requirements. Expert Witness Experience Ms. Gratton has served as a technical expert witness in Higher Education ERP litigation, providing analysis on implementation failures, vendor obligations, and industry-standard practices. Her experience includes direct case work with outside counsel, as well as having been utilized by Ellucian — one of the nation's leading Higher Education ERP vendors — to diagnose and recover failed implementations that had reached critical escalation, including cases involving active or threatened legal action. This dual perspective — having operated on both the client side and the vendor side of failed implementations — gives her a uniquely comprehensive view of where liability and causation arise in complex IT disputes. Her engagements have resolved through negotiated settlement, reflecting the persuasive weight of her findings. Technical Expertise Ms. Gratton has spent her career managing and recovering large-scale ERP implementations across multi-stakeholder enterprise environments. At Ellucian/SunGard Higher Education, she served as Principal Technical Consultant for 18 years, delivering $15M+ in technology services and leading the company's largest-ever deployment — a 41-school rollout spanning 25 development teams. She was repeatedly called upon to rescue failed implementations at major institutions, including Ivy League universities and multi-campus environments, restoring operational stability and resolving situations that had escalated to legal proceedings. Her technical scope includes full ERP stack ownership — server architecture, data migration, system integration, application installation, workflow design, reporting, and cloud environments. She has managed vendor ecosystems including Oracle RDBMS, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Salesforce, Workday, and Ellucian across on-premises, hosted, and cloud deployments. Qualifications & Credentials • Principal Technical Consultant, Ellucian/SunGard Higher Education (18 years) • Founder & Principal, Gratton Advisory — Enterprise Technology Advisory (2020–Present) • Prosci® Certified Change Practitioner (Nov 2024) • MIT Certificate: Artificial Intelligence — Implications for Business Strategy (Dec 2023) • MIT Certificate: Innovation in Medical Technology (Mar 2022) • Candidate, Post-Graduate Certificate in Generative AI for Business Applications, UT Austin • Advisor: Third Bridge Network, Guidepoint Consulting, and Emissary & Exchange • Member, National Association of Professional Women (2016-Present) • A.S., Software Development, Champlain College Why Retain Bernadette Gratton What sets Ms. Gratton apart from other technology expert witnesses is the combination of practitioner depth and legal case experience that is rarely found in a single expert. She has not simply studied ERP implementations — she has led them, recovered them when they failed, and untangled the root causes of failure in environments where millions of dollars and institutional reputations were at stake. She understands the full lifecycle: what vendors promise, what contracts require, what industry standards demand, and where the gap between those things creates liability.