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

A PROPOSITION OF CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS INFLUENCING SOA IMPLEMENTATION IN HEALTHCARE

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been proved to be a significant integration paradigm in many sectors including healthcare. The importance of the development of integrated Information Technology (IT) services and infrastructures in healthcare is enormous as medical errors that occur due the non integrated nature of healthcare systems result in the loss of human lives. The normative literature demonstrates that organizations have difficulties in getting full benefits from SOA adoption for various reasons. Thus, we suggest that the investigation of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) related to SOA implementations in healthcare is important as the understanding of these factors may help organizations to increase the benefits they get from SOA and improve SOA acceptance rate. As a result we review the literature to identify SOA CSFs in healthcare and we classify them. Then we test them through a case study in a public healthcare organization. The results stress the crucial importance of governance and culture and proposed that a new CSF called ?Communications? should be considered. In doing so, we extend the body of literature and we suggest that further research is required to better understand SOA CSFs in healthcare

Sound Foundations: Leveraging International Standards for Australia\u27s National Ehealth System

Background: Australia is currently in the process of deploying a national personally controlled electronic health record (PCEHR). This is being built using a combination of international standards and profiles as well as Australian Standards and with specifications developed by the National eHealth Transition Authority (NeHTA). Objective: There exists a poor appreciation of how the complex construction of the overall system is supported and protected by multiple international standards. These fundamental underpinnings have been sourced from international standards groups such as Health Level Seven (HL7) and Integrating the Health Enterprise (IHE) as well as developed locally. In addition, other services underlie this infrastructure such as secure messaging, the national Health Identification Service and the National Authentication Service for Health (NASH). Methods: An analysis of the national e-health system demonstrates how this model of standards and service integration results in a complex service oriented architecture. Results: The expected benefits from the integrated yet highly dependent nature of the national ehealth system are improved patient outcomes and significant cost savings. These are grounded and balanced by the current and future challenges that include incorporating the PCEHR into clincial workflows and ensuring relevant, timely, detailed clinical data as well as consistent security policy issues and unquantified security threats. Conclusions: Ultimately, Australia has designed an ambitious yet diverse and integrated architecture. What remains to be seen is if the challenges that the medical software industry and clinical community face in leveraging the political process in order to encourage provider and public participation in ehealth, can be achieved despite the sound underpinnings of international standards

The Acceleration of SOA Adoption in Singapore: Challenges and Issues

This paper addresses real challenges and ensuing issues facing the Singapore government in their endeavour to enhance global economic competitiveness through the adoption of innovative technologies development and usage; in this case, the acceleration of SOA. Key stakeholders have spearheaded a strategic and systematic project (called SOA1) to ensure that SOA is inculcated into the mainstream of businesses and industries. Outcomes, insights and lessons learned are presented along with a glimpse of the next phase of the SOA1 project (called Enterprise 2.0). IT Management complexities not accounted for in SOA1 and Enterprise 2.0 are examined with a call for empirical academic research in the areas of people and organisational behaviour within the context of SOA adoption and implementation

Business process modelling in ERP implementation literature review

Business processes are the backbone of any Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation. Business process modelling (BPM) has become essential for modern, process driven enterprises due to the vibrant business environments. As a consequence enterprises are dealing with a substantial rate of organizational and business processes change. Business process modelling enables a common understanding and analysis of the business processes, which is the first step in every ERP implementation methodology (blueprint phase). In order to represent enterprise processes models in an accurate manner, it is paramount to choose a right business process modeling technique and tool. The problem of many ERP projects rated as unsuccessful is directly connected to a lack of use of business process models and notations during the blueprint phase. Also, blueprint implementation phase is crucial in order to fit planned processes in an organization with processes implemented in the solution. However, business analysts and ERP implementation professionals have substantial difficulties to navigate through a large number of theoretical models and representational notations that have been proposed for business process modeling (BPM). As the availability of different business process modeling references is huge, it is time consuming to make review and classification of all modeling techniques. Therefor, in reality majority of ERP implementations blueprint documents have no business process modeling included in generating blueprint documents. Choosing the right model comprise the purpose of the analysis and acquaintance of the available process modelling techniques and tools. The number of references on business modelling is quit large, so it is very hard to make a decision which modeling notation or technique to use. The main purpose of this paper is to make a review of business process modelling literature and describe the key process modelling techniques. The focus will be on all business process modeling that could be used in ERP implementations, specifically during the blueprint phase of the implementation process. Detailed review of BPM (Business process modeling) theoretical models and representational notations, should assist decision makers and ERP integrators in comparatively evaluating and selecting suitable modeling approaches

From strategy to operations and vice-versa: a bridge that needs an Island

The Information Systems support particularly for Tactical Management is not an explicit or distinct term. There are many concepts and artifacts that are providing contemporary foundations for Information systems in the companies, both in theory and in practice. We tried to analyze different approaches, in order to determine their support specifically for tactical management. Out of this attempt, the realization is that these seemingly overarching bridges from Operations to Strategy and vice-versa appear to be overshooting an important island - the tactical management level, particularly in recognizing its distinct characteristics to be served with adjusted concepts and solutions. We see tactical management as the managerial function that implements strategies, by deploying and utilizing specific resources from the operational level in order to gain that specific competitive advantage prescribed in the strategy. The diversity of approaches and tools is provided for the strategic and overwhelmingly for operational management issues. This theoretical research is analyzing the specifics of the Sense-and-Respond Framework on a tactical level towards perfecting the sensing part of it (in terms of sustaining "low latency" (instead of operational "no latency") and striving for tactical need for "right-time" (instead of the current and hot operational "real-time") information), and how it is being closed in theory and practice on a strategic, tactical and operational level with 'endings'. Also, the tactical management characteristic of working in unpredicted environment and needing high adaptability, requires involvement of concepts and approaches that provide adaptability such as, in our opinion, the Sense-and-Respond managerial concept and the SIDA loop. To some extent, tactical management is being assimilated either by strategy or by operations, as this research confirms. Hopefully, we will result with increased perceptiveness that tactical management needs special theoretical and practical focus and output propositions. The specific sensing and interpreting, deciding and acting, in the role of a tactical manager is neither only automatic, data-capturing process nor a person-independent or company-independent one. If, and after this viewpoint is shared, much more efforts will be streamlined in the tactical management "how" to do "what" is expected, on theoretical and on practical level

A transaction-oriented architecture for structuring unstructured information in enterprise applications

As 80-85% of all corporate information remains unstructured, outside of the processing scope of enterprise systems, many enterprises rely on Information Systems that cause them to risk transactions that are based on lack of information (errors of omission) or misleading information (errors of commission). To address this concern, the fundamental business concept of monetary transactions is extended to include qualitative business concepts. A Transaction Concept (TC) is accordingly identified that provides a structure for these unstructured but vital aspects of business transactions. Based on REA (Resources, Events, Agents) and modelled using Conceptual Graphs (CGs) and Formal Concept Analysis (FCA), the TC provides businesses with a more balanced view of the transactions they engage in and a means of discovering new transactions that they might have otherwise missed. A simple example is provided that illustrates this integration and reveals a key missing element. This example is supported by reference to a wide range of case studies and application areas that demonstrate the added value of the TC. The TC is then advanced into a Transaction-Oriented Architecture (TOA). The TOA provides the framework by which an enterprise’s business processes are orchestrated according to the TC. TOA thus brings Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the productivity of enterprise applications to the height of the real, transactional world that enterprises actually operate in.</jats:p

Meeting point of strategy and operations: tactical management sense and response framework enhancement

We recognize a problem of work overload in every managerial position nowadays. This is complemented with data overload, and still somehow, information inadequacy. We recognize the problem of rather clear strategic or business plan expectations and inability to meet them. We also recognize the problem of complexity of issues every manager has to deal with in all of their diversity. All of these elements persisting in an uncertain and unpredictable environment of today's business, technology and economy, where planning is trading places with structuring, modularizing and preparing oneself in being adaptive to any given circumstances, especially in terms of tactics, denote longing for multidimensional support. There are various efforts and products to automatize and enrich the data in order to give basis for better decision-making and problem solving. Also, there are frameworks to formalize and verbalize the strategic or business plan expectations and targets with respective performance measurement in order to point out the direction where a business unit/company should be headed. And quite a lot is being done on a subject-specific areas such as: Alignment of IT and Strategy, Business Operations and Strategy,. But the perceived "boiling" zone of tactical management is somehow un-addressed, both in theory and with feasible artifacts. Tactical Management as the managerial function that implements strategies and deploys and utilizes specific resources from the operational level in order to gain that specific advantage prescribed in the strategy has both differentiating and uniting characteristics when compared to operations and strategy. Furthermore, if standing in the shoes of a tactical manager, what one will see as work description, will be overwhelming crossroads of unmatched information flows in structure, depths, sources, manners, complexity, timings, and expectations. How to perceive, organize, handle and utilize all that landscape with what is given, and be able to handle it dynamically, appropriately and with least expenditures, is what we are aiming for. It's neither straightforward, nor an easy, automated task. For anyone. It is both company-and person-dependent task. This research focuses on tactical management, from the perspective of the individual manager. We believe that by Enhancing the Sense-and-Respond Framework on a tactical level we will assist the individual tactical manager with increased adaptability and handling complexity

A conceptual framework for capability sourcing modeling

Companies need to acquire the right capabilities from the right source, and the right shore, at the right cost to improve their competitive position. Capability sourcing is an organizing process to gain access to best-in-class capabilities for all activities in a firm's value chain to ensure long-term competitive advantage. Capability sourcing modeling is a technique that helps investigating sourcing alternative solutions to facilitate strategic sourcing decision making. Our position is applying conceptual models as intermediate artifacts which are schematic descriptions of sourcing alternatives based on organization's capabilities. The contribution of this paper is introducing a conceptual framework in the form of five views (to organize all perspectives) and a conceptualisation (to formulate a language) for capability sourcing modelling

The creation of business architecture heat maps to support strategy-aligned organizational decisions

The realization of strategic alignment within the business architecture has become increasingly important for companies. Indeed, it facilitates business-IT alignment as a well-designed business architecture helps both to identify the appropriate requirements for IT systems and to discover new business opportunities that can be realized by IT. However, there is a lack of alignment techniques that support organizational (re) design decisions during the operation phase as the actual performance of business architecture elements is neglected. Capability heat maps provide a useful starting point in this respect as they focus on the creation of a hierarchy of prioritized capabilities, which are characterized by a performance measure. In this paper, these techniques will be extended to support strategy-aligned decisions within the business architecture. The identification of the relevant business architecture elements is based on state-of-the-art enterprise modelling languages, which enable the development of enterprise models on distinct layers of the business architecture. Strategic alignment between these elements will be realized by using prioritization according to the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), while performance measurement will enable the creation of a proper decision support system. Afterwards, the proposed heat map will be applied on a case example to illustrate its potential use. This results in the completion of a first build-and-evaluate loop within the Design Science methodology