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

Digital transformation: incorporating social and human extensions into change models

This study is about incorporating social and human dimensions of the organisation into change models to support technology enabled change, also known as digital transformation. Organisations often manifest change through projects. Despite utilizing change models and frameworks, the rate of failure remains as high as 80%, leading to estimated financial losses of $900B USD a year, in addition to non-financial losses such as opportunity cost, change fatigue, loss of confidence and poor morale. Studies show that the majority of the root causes of failure are non-technical; yet change models and frameworks focus on the technical aspects, providing little guidance to the non-technical aspects (i.e. social and human). This study explores this omission with the aim of developing extensions to improve the success rate of organisational change. The context of the study is two multi-national organisations undergoing digital transformation: a telecommunication provider and a financial institution. The researcher, by virtue of his role as digital transformation leader, is embedded in both organisations which facilitates a deeper understanding of the change context and more informed interpretation of observations and data. Action Research principles support the researcher’s dual role and provide rigor and validity. The study uses Mixed Methods to collect data: two focus-groups sessions with 14 to 20 participants in each and 11 semi-structured interviews with change leaders. The researcher recognizes the ethical implications and tensions associated with Action Research, and maintains vigilance and balance throughout. The study outcomes represent proposed extensions to change models and are model agnostic. They include language, definitions of ‘social’ and ‘human’ aspects of organisational change, themes supporting social and human dimensions of change, weaving of the themes into a practical workflow, and a stakeholder categorization framework mapped to power of influence spectrum. In addition, an interconnected Organisational Model - Human, Business, and Environment - is presented. The proposed extensions aim to improve the success rate of digital transformation and as a result, contribute to boosting productivity, reducing operating costs and improving organisational performance

Exploring ‘People’ as the key element in enterprise architecture implementation: A Critical Realist Perspective

TOGAF (2009) describes the purpose of Enterprise Architecture (EA) is to optimise enterprisewide systems - the often-fragmented legacy of data processes (both manual and automated) - into an integrated environment that is responsive to change and supports the delivery of the business strategy (The Open Group Architecture Framework [TOGAF], 2009). However, for a number of reasons organisations still have difficulties establishing an effective EA (Raadt & Vliet, 2008; Gartner, 2009; and Janssen & Klievink, 2012, among others) and various reports suggest up to two thirds of implementations do not fulfil expectations (Roeleven, 2010). Being organisation wide with a strong governance element EA has significant social implications and social dependence, yet many implementations wrongly treat EA as solely a technical program. This thesis argues that the lack of focus on the ‘people’ element of EA could be the reason why many organisations still struggle with EA implementation. Recognising the importance of people in EA implementation requires acceptance of implementation as a social program, heavily influenced by the structural and cultural systems surrounding the architecture. In order to address the need for greater recognition of the role of people and the social aspects of EA implementation, this thesis adopts critical realism (CR) and its most recognised methodology, the morphogenetic approach (MA). Realism emphasises ontology and strongly argues that ontology, methodology and epistemology are closely linked – as Fleetwood (2005, p. 197) suggests, ontology matters: “The way we think the world is (ontology) influences: what we think can be known about it (epistemology); how we think it can be investigated (methodology and research techniques); the kinds of theories we think can be constructed about it; and the political and policy stances we are prepared to take”. In order to examine the social implications of technology implementation it makes sense to adopt a wellrecognized social theory like critical realism. This social realist approach proposes an analytical separation between structure, culture and agency (people) in order to examine their interactions over time. The MA suggests three important cycles – structural conditioning, social interaction and structural elaboration that provide a platform for examining possible change. Archer also importantly suggests that the emergent properties of collectivities and individuals differ. Such a model has clear value for examining the “people” acceptance of the new impositions and opportunities provided by the EA implementation. It acknowledges the sociocultural consequences of interactions between the structure and the culture to provide particular situational logics that direct, but do not determine the actions of people. The MA emphasises strongly the role of time in situation examination suggesting that structure and culture predate subsequent actions by involved agents. The thesis describes particular situational logics or mechanisms emanating from the interaction between structural and cultural systems that encourage particular behaviours in response to the EA program. These actions are then further examined in the sequence of MA cycles. Since mechanisms are only effective if people adopt them or not, another important element in this study is the part played by “reflexivity”. Reflexivity highlights the linkage between people concerns, projects and practices as people act in order to promote their concerns, and form projects to advance or to protect what they care about most. Reflexivity is an important mechanism for explaining how people’s ultimate concerns impact on their approach to the impositions of EA. An Australian university implementing EA (termed UX for anonymity) has been used as a case study in this research – this fortuitous timing allowed a careful and detailed examination of implementation over a 3-year period from initial rollout to ultimate acceptance. The study describes the challenging environment of university implementation where “academic freedom” is paramount and individual and group autonomies are threatened by EA – the study presents the important mechanisms and situational logics that direct people’s actions within the complex social context of a university. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were used as the primary method of data collection across UX stakeholders. A range of interviews were held throughout the study period with the university IT Governance Committee, the University Architecture Board, the CIO, and the Enterprise Business Group, as well as individual end-users such as teaching staff, researchers, students, and administrative staff of the faculties, schools and service centres. The MA provided a basic structure for unravelling the social complexity and helped guide the interview questions to identify the generative mechanisms hidden in the real domain, and to highlight the conditions that encourage individual and collective acceptance of EA practices. The reflexivity indicator developed by Archer –ICONI– is used throughout to explain how personal projects are formed and how they mediate the exercise of structural/cultural constraints and enablement within EA implementation. Passive participation in regular EA implementation meetings at UX was also important and useful to unearth possible perceived causal possibilities emanating from within the program itself and evident within the social context of implementation. Underpinned by a critical realist perspective, the thesis demonstrates that the MA is a powerful analytical tool to uncover the hidden mechanisms (the situational logics of structures and cultures) and social responses that enable success of EA implementation. The research examines the particular situational logics evident within the University under study and how these provide opportunities and constraints to the acceptance of EA over time. Equally important was reflexivity theory in attaining knowledge and understanding about what it is about people’s internal relations that makes EA implementation succeed. This thesis offers organisations a means to focus on the deeper issues of EA implementation programs by understanding the social complexity surrounding the architecture. The recognition of people as a key element in EA implementation provides a useful explanation of how the key stakeholders (and their power, influence and interests) may constrain and enable EA implementation. By including reflexivity as an important mechanism, organisations will be in a better position to understand the role of people and their interactions with preexisting structures and cultures operating over different time periods – reflexivity suggesting that “people” always have the possibility to do otherwise than expected, largely dependent on their personal history and their current personal projects and ultimate concerns

Contrasting approaches to preparedness: a reflection on two case studies

This chapter reflects on ongoing research in SMEs in the manufacturing and service sectors. It contrasts different approaches to the issue of preparedness from an organisational and social perspective, in two cases where new enterprise-wide business processes were implemented and integrated in different settings. In both cases, the emergence of new systems presented a huge challenge to companies hard-pressed to marshal the resources to mount effective change and implementation projects on this scale. The cases presented enable a comparison of different strategies used, one firm responding to organic growth, and the other to rapid industry-driven change. The chapter focuses not on the implementations per se, but instead on the issue of preparedness for change. The chapter concludes by drawing out general lessons concerning how to support and maintain organisational preparedness for enterprise wide change in different industry setting

Enterprise Architecture adoption method for Higher Education Institutions

During the last few years Enterprise Architecture has received increasing attention among industry and academia. Enterprise Architecture (EA) can be defined as (i) a formal description of the current and future state(s) of an organisation, and (ii) a managed change between these states to meet organisation’s stakeholders’ goals and to create value to the organisation. By adopting EA, organisations may gain a number of benefits such as better decision making, increased revenues and cost reductions, and alignment of business and IT. To increase the performance of public sector operations, and to improve public services and their availability, the Finnish Parliament has ratified the Act on Information Management Governance in Public Administration in 2011. The Act mandates public sector organisations to start adopting EA by 2014, including Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Despite the benefits of EA and the Act, EA adoption level and maturity in Finnish HEIs are low. This is partly caused by the fact that EA adoption has been found to be difficult. Thus there is a need for a solution to help organisations to adopt EA successfully. This thesis follows Design Science (DS) approach to improve traditional EA adoption method in order to increase the likelihood of successful adoption. First a model is developed to explain the change resistance during EA adoption. To find out problems associated with EA adoption, an EA-pilot conducted in 2010 among 12 Finnish HEIs was analysed using the model. It was found that most of the problems were caused by misunderstood EA concepts, attitudes, and lack of skills. The traditional EA adoption method does not pay attention to these. To overcome the limitations of the traditional EA adoption method, an improved EA Adoption Method (EAAM) is introduced. By following EAAM, organisations may increase the likelihood of successful EA adoption. EAAM helps in acquiring the mandate for EA adoption from top-management, which has been found to be crucial to success. It also helps in supporting individual and organisational learning, which has also found to be essential in successful adoption

Business strategy driven IT systems for engineer-to-order and make-to-order manufacturing enterprises

This thesis reports research into the specification and implementation of an Information Technology (IT) Route Map. The purpose of the Route Map is to enable rapid design and deployment of IT solutions capable of semi-automating business processes in a manufacturing enterprise. The Map helps structure transition processes involved in “identification of key business strategies and design of business processes” and “choice of enterprise systems and supporting implementation techniques”. Common limitations of current Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are observed and incorporated as Route Map implications and constraints. Scope of investigation is targeted at Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) that employ Engineer-To-Order (ETO) and Make-To-Order (MTO) business processes. However, a feature of the Route Map is that it takes into account contemporary business concerns related to “globalisation”, “mergers and acquisitions” and “typical resource constraint problems of SMEs”. In the course of the research a “Business Strategy Driven IT System Concept” was conceived and examined. The main purpose of this concept is to promote the development of agile and innovative business activity in SMEs. The Road Map encourages strategy driven solutions to be (a) specified based on the use of emerging enterprise engineering theories and (b) implemented and changed using componentbased systems design and composition techniques. Part-evaluation of the applicability and capabilities of the Road Map has been carried out by conducting industrial survey and case study work. This assesses requirements of real industrial problems and solutions. The evaluation work has also been enabled by conducting a pilot implementation of the thesis concepts at the premises of a partner SME