Strategies for U.S. City Government Enterprise Resource Planning System Implementation Success

Strategies for enterprise resource planning (ERP) system implementation success have been a focus of scholars since the 1990s. Researchers have demonstrated that ERP system implementation could cause both system failures and organization failures, affecting both operations and stakeholders. The theory of constraints was the conceptual framework for this single qualitative case study that explored ERP system critical success factors (CSFs) and strategies U.S. city governments use to successfully implement ERP systems. One city government in New Mexico with a successful ERP system served as the case study\u27s population. Data were collected from semistructured interviews and relevant documents and then open coded and thematically analyzed. Triangulation was employed to increase the trustworthiness of interpretations. The primary themes that emerged from the analysis of this single case study revealed the importance of the city government adequately resourcing and staffing the organization, providing top management support, continuously communicating to clarify motivations for implementations, gaining concurrence, and maintaining a change management asset. Other city government end-users, managers, leaders, and vendors could benefit from results of this study by identifying and addressing the relevant principal CSFs, and then developing and deploying strategies for the implementation, control, and remediation phases to increase ERP systems\u27 utility. City governments seeking to implement ERPs could effect social change by demonstrating fiscal stewardship of resources, adding fiscally efficient and efficacious operations directly supporting constituents, and increasing public confidence

ERP effort estimation based on expert judgments

A new technology shift brings to the ERP domain a change in the industry and a new platform build on in-memory optimized databases, introduced and known as SAP HANA [1]. This technology shift in the ERP domain led to SAP's ERP on HANA, the solution where the ERP suite is offered on the same platform as ERP Services such as Business Analytics. The integration of ERP Services and the ERP suite brings to the industry new opportunities to "fine tune" customer and industry specific business processes. This radical shift in innovation brings with it new challenges in terms of ERP effort estimation. No longer can we rely on a single method such as functional size measurement methods, due to the wide range of customization possibilities. This shift from a typical predefined solution scope to a highly customizable landscape poses a challenge to project estimation practitioners as the functional size estimation techniques used in the past for ERP solutions address a fixed scope deployable in multiple landscapes, and hence are no longer suitable for dynamically definable scope. Today's highly volatile and customized ERP landscape demands a new approach to estimate effort by leveraging ERP professionals' tacit knowledge and expert judgments. This paper presents the ERP Service estimation method that leverages the strengths of expert-judgment-based estimation techniques while using a more structured approach to reduce the effects of expert bias and avoid common pitfalls associated with judgment-based estimation

ERP Effort Estimation Based on Expert Judgments

A new technology shift brings to the ERP domain a change in the industry and a new platform build on in-memory optimized databases, introduced and known as SAP HANA [1]. This technology shift in the ERP domain led to SAP's ERP on HANA, the solution where the ERP suite is offered on the same platform as ERP Services such as Business Analytics. The integration of ERP Services and the ERP suite brings to the industry new opportunities to "fine tune" customer and industry specific business processes. This radical shift in innovation brings with it new challenges in terms of ERP effort estimation. No longer can we rely on a single method such as functional size measurement methods, due to the wide range of customization possibilities. This shift from a typical predefined solution scope to a highly customizable landscape poses a challenge to project estimation practitioners as the functional size estimation techniques used in the past for ERP solutions address a fixed scope deployable in multiple landscapes, and hence are no longer suitable for dynamically definable scope. Today's highly volatile and customized ERP landscape demands a new approach to estimate effort by leveraging ERP professionals' tacit knowledge and expert judgments. This paper presents the ERP Service estimation method that leverages the strengths of expert-judgment-based estimation techniques while using a more structured approach to reduce the effects of expert bias and avoid common pitfalls associated with judgment-based estimation