بررسی مسائل مهم مدیریتی در پیاده سازی ERP : شواهد تجربی از سازمان های کانادایی

The study investigates critical management issues in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation projects such as selection of ERP vendor, project manager, and implementation partners; constitution of project team; project planning, training, infrastructure development, on-going project management; quality assurance and stabilization of ERP. The innovation process study approach is taken and data is collected from 20 organizations using a questionnaire and structured interviews. Although each adopting organization has a distinct set of objectives for its systems project, we found many similarities in motivations, concerns, and strategies across organizations. This study identifies many critical concerns in ERP project management.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are reshaping business structures because they promise to solve the challenges posed by portfolios of supposedly disconnected and uncoordinated business applications (Davenport, 1998). Also referred to as enterprise-wide systems or enterprise systems due to their enterprise-wide scope, these integrated enterprise-computing systems provide seamless integration of all the information flowing through an organization (Davenport, 1998 and Markus and Tanis, 2000). A large and rapidly expanding marketplace1 that has developed for ERP systems signifies adoption of ERP by a substantial number of organizations while near term success and long-term survival of such systems is difficult to predict. Organizations that have successfully adopted ERP systems view them as one of the most important innovations that have lead to the realization of substantial tangible and intangible improvements in a variety of areas (Davenport, 1998, Davenport, 2000 and Markus and Tanis, 2000). However, there are a number of examples where organizations were not successful in reaping the potential benefits that motivated them to make large investments in ERP implementations (Davenport, 1998, Davenport, 2000 and Markus and Tanis, 2000). In the near-term perspective, managers find ERP implementation projects the most difficult systems development projects (Wilder and Davis, 1998). ERP projects are set apart by their complexity, enterprise-wide scope and challenges posed by accompanying large-scale organizational changes in transition to new systems and business processes. In the long-term, the impact on the organization’s IT support and maintenance and organizational performance of ERP projects is still unknown (Glass, 1998). Despite the wide spread popularity of ERP, not all organizations are aggressively adopting ERP systems. Some have adopted certain stand alone or partially integrated functional modules, while some organizations have even discontinued implementing or using ERP systems after adoption2 (Davenport, 1998 and Bingi et al., 1999). The lack of empirically supported research on critical ERP project management issues has motivated us to study the ERP implementation projects by surveying the organizations which have adopted ERP systems. ERP systems are packaged software applications originally targeted at manufacturing companies. Several studies to date have focused on adoption of packaged software applications and advanced manufacturing technologies (Dean Jr., 1986; Noori, 1992, Kumar et al., 1996, Siegel et al., 1997 and Lassila and Brancheau, 1999. However, associated organizational and process re-engineering in ERP projects, the enterprise-wide implications, high resource commitment, high potential business benefits and risks associated with ERP systems make their implementation a much more complex exercise in innovation and change management than any other software package or advance manufacturing technology. Radding (1999) argues that when an organization puts millions of dollars into a core business application and re-engineers its business processes around it, the exercise is destined to become much more than an systems development project. ERP applications lock the operating principles and processes of the organization into software systems. If organizations fail to reconcile the technological imperatives of the enterprise systems with the business needs, the logic of the system may conflict with the logic of business systems (Davenport, 1998). The cost, complexity, investment of time and staff, and implications of modifications, however, make a rollback very difficult. One extreme example of not getting strategic ERP implementation choices right is FoxMeyer Drugs, where the bankruptcy trustees are suing its systems’ vendor and consultant company, blaming the ERP system for its business failure (Davenport, 1998). This research explores the key considerations and successful strategies in an ERP implementation projects such as selection of project manager, ERP vendor and implementation partners; constitution of project team, challenges in training, and upgrading the infrastructure, ongoing project management, quality assurance and stabilization of ERP. The theoretical foundation is based upon the innovation process theory approach wherein we adopt the “enterprise systems experience cycle” framework of Markus and Tanis (2000) to delineate the innovation process. The next section provides a literature review of ERP and the organizational innovation process of ERP implementation. Section 3 describes the methodology used in collecting data and analysis. Section 4 presents findings and managerial implications and Section 5 presents our conclusions and recommendations for further research.

This research is at an exploratory level as ERP is a relatively new concept and only a little empirically sup- ported research is available. While it does not produce generalizable results, the reasonably representative sam- ple selected provides valuable insight into the ERP implementation process and documents critical ERP implementation issues. Outsourcing skills from consultants came out as a widely accepted method in ERP implementation. How- ever, no formally modeled methodology was used for evaluating technical and management consultants. Inter- estingly, a company also found incompetent consultants as a major challenge in implementation. It was obvious from the results that in implementing ERP systems fi rms faced more behavioral and management related chal- lenges; such as the end user not being ready, resistance to change, lack of training, turnover of key project per- sons and lack of project planning, rather than pure tech- nical glitches such as software bugs and con fi guration dif fi culties. Most of the respondents resolved to place more emphasis on the behavioral and management issues of implementation, and improving the processes when asked about the lessons learnt from the project. As one respondent commented: In essence, ERP deployment in itself saves nothing and does not improve anything. It ’ s the people and processes that create bene fi tsThe research identi fi es a number of critical manage- ment challenges in the ERP implementation activities, such as training, upgrading infrastructure, project man- agement and stabilizing ERP systems. Organizational strategies in testing and quality assurance, meeting incompatiblilities between organizational needs and the ERP systems, increasing user acceptance, and resolving challenges in shakedown are also documented. A num- ber of avenues can be recognized for future detailed research, based on organizational concerns found in this study. For example a detailed study on training, one major organizational concern identi fi ed, would ascertain how effective ERP training can be carried out. Another natural extension of this study could be to explore the organizations which have stabilized their ERP systems and have moved to the onwards and upwards stage, a stage where the organization realizes business bene fi ts. The following comment by one of the respondents testi fi es to the scope of research in the onward and upward phase: ERP is a gigantic system; we do not have the staff to explore every corner of ERP to see what all the capabilities of ERP are. There are not many ERP delivered reports, we have to create our own reports; we have not done a lot much of that, we haven ’ t implemented all the reporting. Sector speci fi c studies of ERP will be valuable for understanding the business speci fi c concerns and bench- marking the processes in these domains. The research revealed that certain sectors such as Museums and Fab- less (virtual manufacturing) Semiconductor do not have industry speci fi c ERP solutions. A detailed study of the information needs of these sectors will aid the develop- ment of more effective ERP solutions for these sectors