Assessing the Correlation Between ERP System Implementation - IT Assignment Help

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Abstract

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects continue to attract attention, as researchers seek to develop insights and understanding of the conditions required for successful project delivery. Having spent an entire career to-date in different ICT roles, the authors have experienced several ERP implementations. There is considerable literature on what constitutes precedent conditions for successful ERP project delivery, commonly referred to as critical success factors (CSFs) for ERP projects. Most of these factors are presented from a project-centric context, that is, they are activated at the advent of an ERP project and recede with project closure. One distinctive factor which attracts attention by its seeming absence from literature on CSFs is the level of maturity of business processes in the implementing organisation. This study takes a closer look at business process maturity as relevant and important for ERP implementation success, and compares this with other CSFs. In this paper, an integration of business process maturity models, ERP implementation stages and systems characteristics through maturity stages is presented to formulate a conceptual framework to assess the correlation of ERP project implementation against organizational business process maturity. Keywords Critical success factors, Business process maturity, Implementation, Enterprise Resource Planning.

1. Introduction

The reasons for ERP systems failure remain constant despite all the lessons shared and expressed through research. Experience shows that a lack of attention on factors such as project management, support of top management, user or employee involvement, training and business process reengineering can all contribute to the high failure rates. Among the factors commonly cited as critical for implementation of ERP projects (Ehie & Madsen, 2005; Bhatti, 2005; Holland et al. 1999), business process maturity and business process competence do not immediately receive explicit mention, or they are at best implied. The failure of ERP systems is often a factor of misalignment between the processes embedded in the ERP system and those practiced in the implementing organisation. This paper focuses on the role of business process maturity and assesses it against other factors regarded as critical for ERP implementation.

2. Purpose of the research

While literature on critical success factors for ERP implementation gives as much attention to business process reengineering as the other factors, there appears to be no explicit mention of the role of organisational business process maturity in relation to ERP implementation projects. The 2 purpose of this study is to investigate the nature of the relationship between business process maturity and ERP implementation.

3. Main research question

The most common among the critical success factors (CSFs) for ERP implementation include top management support, change management, project management, user training and business process change or reengineering (Muscatello and Chan 2008; Finney & Corbett 2007; Nah & Delgado 2006; Ehie & Madsen 2005; Bhatti 2005; Holland et al. 1999). The lack of specific attention on business process maturity in the literature on CSFs for ERP implementations led to the formulation of the research question “How can the correlation of ERP project implementation be assessed against organisational business process maturity?” This paper seeks to answer the research question while also validating business process maturity as a critical consideration for ERP implementation.

4. ERP implementation overview

Organisations approach ERP implementations differently, however the most common approaches are “vanilla” implementation and custom implementation. In a “vanilla” implementation, the ERP solution is implemented and configured as packaged. No modifications are made to the software, and this means that the implementing organisation consciously adopts all the processes embedded in the system. A critical consideration in this approach is that any existing business processes that differ from their matching modules in the ERP system are discarded or modified to match those in the ERP system. In this approach, the focus of business process reengineering is the adaptation of existing business processes to the ERP processes, and this requires extensive user involvement and training as the organisation adopts new ways of working (Kraemmerand et al. 2003).

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