Exploring the diversity of ERP systems – An empirical insight into system usage in academia

Because of the increasing importance of ERP systems and their educational value, as well as the rapidly changing ERPmarket, many universities use or want to use ERP systems for their courses. The aim of these courses is to teach anddemonstrate different ERP related concepts and processes. To support these courses, some ERP manufacturers co-operateclosely with universities and offer their systems and resources for academic teaching. However, there are hardly anyempirical insights on system usage in academia. As an initial survey, we developed a questionnaire to determine the currentstatus of ERP system usage and integration in courses at IS chairs of German-speaking research-oriented universities. Among92 responding university chairs, 59 are teaching ERP topics. Of these 59 chairs, only 38 are teaching ERP systemspractically. Almost every university chair (35 out of 38) that is providing practical courses for students is using SAP

Tracing the Clouds. A research taxonomy of cloud-ERP in SMEs

Cloud computing is an enabler and accelerator of digital transformation, which has brought many advantages that only large companies had before for any start-up and small firm could benefit. Cloud-based computing in the form of SaaS (Software as a Service) has given rise to a revolutionary new way of delivering software applications via the Internet on a pay-per-use basis. Cloud-ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solutions have become more affordable, easier to implement, simpler to maintain, and thus especially suitable for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which have limited resources and may not be willing to invest in on-premise solutions. Employing this technology empowers integrated management of business processes and has the potential to add technical and strategic business value for small businesses. Given the claimed significance of SMEs in a structure of the world economy, we embarked on a detailed study of the existing published literature to determine the status quo of research on cloud-ERP technology in SMEs and how it has evolved in terms of quantity, content, and publication outlets. This is achieved by systematically reviewing 74 articles from 43 journals and 22 conferences published between 1 January 2010 and 30 June 2019. Using the ERP life-cycle-based framework by Esteves and Pastor (1999), articles are classified according to six life-cycle phases: adoption decision, acquisition, implementation, use and maintenance, evolution, and retirement. The findings, derived from a meta-analysis, illustrate that while current literature and studies related to the adoption decision phase are very rich, research on other phases of the ERP life cycle lacks strong empirical validation, due to a limited amount of publications. This study presents a comprehensive, structured literature review on cloud-based ERP adoption among SMEs and provides both academics and practitioners with a holistic view of the state of the current body of knowledge on the topic along with an understanding of how cloud-ERP in SMEs research is evolving

Cultural change through the implementation of an enterprise system: a UK university case study

Purpose: Organisations spend a lot of money, time and resources on Enterprise System (ES) implementation and often they do not realise the expected benefits from these complex systems. There is a gap in the literature in providing sufficient insight into the implementation process or how an ES might influence or contribute to a culture change. The aim of this article is to address the gap in the ES literature around culture by exploring the implementation that was undertaken within a large UK university. Design/methodology/approach: This paper contributes to the Higher Education (HE) and enterprise systems literature through an in-depth study of an enterprise system, SITS, implementation within a university in the UK. The study was undertaken over a three year period where one of the authors was embedded within the organisation. Findings: Using a cultural analysis framework the extensive rich data was analysed and the outcomes indicate that SITS has had a huge influence on the culture of the university; the technology’s rigid structure has imposed many changes that had not been anticipated. Originality/value: ES have recently emerged in the higher education sector where they are intended to support the management of student data and provide strategic management information. Although there are many studies which have explored important aspects of the implementation of enterprise systems, one area that appears to have been under-researched is how these systems are implicated in culture change within organisations. The results of this study will enable managers as well as IT specialists to gain rich insights into an ES implementation in the HE sector and to use this knowledge for future implementations

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Understanding knowledge management software-organisation misalignments from an institutional perspective:A case study of a global IT-management consultancy firm

Inspired by the proposition that “Enterprise IS configurations chosen by the organisations will encodeinstitutionalised principles into these systems” (Gosain, 2004, p. 169), this study seeks to draw attentionto potential sources of misalignment between knowledge management (KM) software and the imple-menting organisation from an institutional theory perspective. Using a case of a global consultancy firm,the study elucidates such misalignments as the consequence of different institutional contexts wheretechnology developers and adopters operate. This study demonstrates how institutional forces affect theimplementation project and provides some lessons learned for organisations that are rich in high-valuetext-based knowledge for making decisions

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Integrating Enterprise System’s 3rd Wave Into IS Curriculum

This paper covers our observations that while enterprise systems are in their 4th Wave, current enterprise systems courses mainly cover the skills requirement up to the 2nd Wave. In this paper, we present our experience in developing an elective course (to address the 3rd Wave enterprise systems skills and knowledge) within the BSc Information Systems Management curriculum. This include the learning objectives and competencies, curriculum context, course structure, lab content, assessments, student evaluation and industry feedback

DRIVERS FOR THE ADOPTION OF MOBILE DEVICE MANAGEMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS

The diffusion of mobile devices rapidly increased in the last decade. Nowadays, smartphones are part of our daily lives, both with respect to private and professional use. This leads to several challenges for enterprises, like the trend to Bring Your Own Device or IT consumerization. IT executives are forced to ensure a high level of security, provide services for employees and support the enterprise productivity. In this context, several software solutions have been introduced to manage the mobile IT, one of which are mobile device management (MDM) systems. However, until now, there is a lack of research concerning possible factors that may influnce the adoption of MDM systems in enterprises. Based on the well-established Technology Organization Environment (TOE) Framework a model for MDM adoption in enterprises is constructed and tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). Data was gathered by means of an online survey, in which 95 IT executives from German enterprises participated. Overall, it could be found that perceived security benefits, costs, firm-size, and the BYOD culture significantly influnce MDM adoption, while regulations, business partners, employees´ innovativeness with IT and the amount of mobile device usage have no significant influnce