The Life Cycle Challenge of ERP System Integration

To serve its purpose as a backbone for business integration, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems need to be integrated with other information systems inside and outside the boundaries of an enterprise. An inductive case study was made to examine a long-term ERP system of a large manufacturing enterprise to better understand the nature and importance of ERP system integration. Our results can be summarized as four findings about the current life cycle models: 1) integration should be a major consideration when choosing ERPs, 2) deployments are continuous, 3) external integration is not just an extension phase after the project and 4) integration remains as a continuous challenge which is never fully achieved due to the constantly changing business requirements and organizational landscape. The results can help managers when making decisions on integration issues, yet effective approaches for integration governance are needed in order to avoid the increased costs and complexity

The impact of enterprise application integration on information system lifecycles

Information systems (IS) have become the organisational fabric for intra-and inter-organisational collaboration in business. As a result, there is mounting pressure from customers and suppliers for a direct move away from disparate systems operating in parallel towards a more common shared architecture. In part, this has been achieved through the emergence of new technology that is being packaged into a portfolio of technologies known as enterprise application integration (EAI). Its emergence however, is presenting investment decision-makers charged with the evaluation of IS with an interesting challenge. The integration of IS in-line with the needs of the business is extending their identity and lifecycle, making it difficult to evaluate the full impact of the system as it has no definitive start and/or end. Indeed, the argument presented in this paper is that traditional life cycle models are changing as a result of technologies that support their integration with other systems. In this paper, the need for a better understanding of EAI and its impact on IS lifecycles are discussed and a classification framework proposed.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Grant Ref: (GR/R08025) and Australian Research Council (DP0344682)

Challenges and influential factors in ERP adoption and implementation

The adoption and implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems is a challenging and expensive task that not only requires rigorous efforts but also demands to have a detailed analysis of such factors that are critical to the adoption or implementation of ERP systems. Many efforts have been made to identify such influential factors for ERP; however, they are not filtered comprehensively in terms of the different perspectives. This paper focuses on the ERP critical success factors from five different perspectives such as: stakeholders; process; technology; organisation; and project. Results from the literature review are presented and 19 such factors are identified that are imperative for a successful ERP implementation, which are listed in order of their importance. Considering these factors can realize several benefits such as reducing costs and saving time or extra effort

A comprehensive review of the enterprise systems research

(WP 12/04 Clave pdf) Enterprise systems (ES) can be considered as a novel phenomenon for the information system research and other academic fields (e.g. operations and supply chain), which has opened an immense potential and opportunities for research. Although the interest of the scholars on ES is recent, the number of publications is continuously growing since 2000. The aim of this paper is to review a sample of important contributions of the ES works published to date. To do this, the selected works have been classified in four key topics: business implications, technical issues, managerial issues, and implementation issues.Enterprise systems, Research

Investigating factors influencing the decision making process for ERP adoption and implementation: An exploratory case study

The rapid developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have resulted into a borderless business environment along with an amplified market competition. Traversing through such a trend globally, organisations have significantly focused on adopting and implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to automate their prime business processes, enhance organisational productivity with lower costs and prompt service delivery to fulfil consumer demands. Thus, ERP systems are considered as a principal source to provide imperative information vital for strategic decision making process. On the contrary, ERP systems adoption and implementation is also highly considered as a challenging and expensive process that not only requires rigorous efforts but also demands to have an exhaustive investigation of influential factors that are critical to the adoption and implementation of ERP systems. A plethora of research studies have been theorised exploring factors influencing the decision making process for ERP adoption and implementation; however, the authors claim that these studies are not filtered comprehensively in terms of the different perspectives. Notwithstanding, the implications of such research have yet to be assessed, leaving scope for timeliness and novel research. This paper thus focuses on the ERP critical success factors from five different perspectives such as: stakeholders; process; technology; organisation; and project based on the literature analysis. These perspectives comprise of 24 factors that are imperative for a successful ERP adoption and implementation, which are validated through a qualitative single case study based research. The empirical findings illustrate that these factor help realise significant benefits such as reducing costs and saving time or extra effort

Correlating Architecture Maturity and Enterprise Systems Usage Maturity to Improve Business/IT Alignment

This paper compares concepts of maturity models in the areas of Enterprise Architecture and Enterprise Systems Usage. We investigate whether these concepts correlate, overlap and explain each other. The two maturity models are applied in a case study. We conclude that although it is possible to fully relate constructs from both kinds of models, having a mature architecture function in a company does not imply a high Enterprise Systems Usage maturity

Baan Company’s Corporate Web Strategy – An Effort To Reach Main Street

During the 1990s Baan Company became a market leader in the enterprise applications industry. Its mission was to become an independent software manufacturer, serving a global market. To speed up growth, Baan developed its Baan Web strategy which implied a far-reaching renewal of its corporate strategy. Burgelman and Grove (1996) define the moment of choosing a new strategy as a strategic inflection point. Their framework named “Dynamic Forces in Firm Evolution†explains that ssuccessful development and implementation of a new corporate strategy is a process of aligning five dynamic forces. The focus of this study is on the vital role of the internal selection environment. This force regulates the allocation of the company’s scarce resources – cash, competences/capabilities and senior management attention – to strategic action. It is the crucial force in the continuing alignment processes that have to take place. Every company has a unique combination of distinctive competences (Burgelman) or dynamic capabilities (Teece). The study explains that to execute a new strategy successfully new competences/capabilities have to be developed based on existent ones. The development of Baan’s corporate strategy is analyzed and discussed with reference to the Technology Adoption Life Cycle (Moore). The study concludes with the management implications of a strategic inflection point.globalization;growth;dynamic capabilities;ERP;software;business web;corporate strategy;distinctive competences;strategic inflection point

Costs, Benefits and Value Distribution – Ingredients for Successful Cross-Organizational ES Business Cases

This paper introduces my PhD research project on developing guidelines for creating successful business cases for Enterprise System implementations in network settings. Three important aspects that were found to be important in such business cases are: the costs, benefits and the value distribution within a network. Each of the three aspects is addressed in this paper and the relationships between them are pointed out. A research model is presented showing how all three aspects contribute to the main goal of defining successful business case guidelines