Title:
An Empirical Investigation of Factors Affecting ERP Impact
Abstract: Introducing Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP) systems in an organisation often has far-reaching impacts. However
the expected ERP benefits have not always materialised. When implementing
ERP, most companies choose the less expensive route of modifying their business
processes to fit the ERP system, but this route is not necessarily the most
optimal one. This paper investigates the specific impact of Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) systems on business processes by using nine critical success
factors identified in the literature as independent variables, including
team composition, top management support, project champion, communication
and training. Twenty-two ERP implementations were used to analyze the impact
of these variables. Despite the small sample, some interesting findings emerge
although not many were fully conclusive. However, the latter finding may
caution practitioners and academics about making blanket recommendations
of changing all business processes to fit the ERP system.
Author: Stanislav Prokopiev, Lisa Seymour, and Jean-Paul Van
Belle