Putting the enterprise into the enterprise system
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The author discusses the pros and cons of implementing an enterprise system, showing how a system can produce unintended and highly disruptive consequences and cautions against shifting responsibility for its adoption to technologists.Abstract:
Enterprise systems present a new model of corporate computing. They allow companies to replace their existing information systems, which are often incompatible with one another, with a single, integrated system. By streamlining data flows throughout an organization, these commercial software packages, offered by vendors like SAP, promise dramatic gains in a company's efficiency and bottom line. It's no wonder that businesses are rushing to jump on the ES bandwagon. But while these systems offer tremendous rewards, the risks they carry are equally great. Not only are the systems expensive and difficult to implement, they can also tie the hands of managers. Unlike computer systems of the past, which were typically developed in-house with a company's specific requirements in mind, enterprise systems are off-the-shelf solutions. They impose their own logic on a company's strategy, culture, and organization, often forcing companies to change the way they do business. Managers would do well to heed the horror stories of failed implementations. FoxMeyer Drug, for example, claims that its system helped drive it into bankruptcy. Drawing on examples of both successful and unsuccessful ES projects, the author discusses the pros and cons of implementing an enterprise system, showing how a system can produce unintended and highly disruptive consequences. Because of an ES's profound business implications, he cautions against shifting responsibility for its adoption to technologists. Only a general manager will be able to mediate between the imperatives of the system and the imperatives of the business.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Critical issues affecting an erp implementation
TL;DR: Critical issues that must be carefully considered to ensure successful implementation include commitment from top management, reengineering of the existing processes, integration of the ERP with other business information systems, selection and management of consultants and employees, and training of employees on the new system.
Journal ArticleDOI
The critical success factors for ERP implementation: an organizational fit perspective
Kyung-Kwon Hong,Young-Gul Kim +1 more
TL;DR: The results from the field survey of 34 organizations show that ERP implementation success significantly depends on the organizational fit of ERP and certain implementation contingencies, which indicates that the root of such high failure rate is explored from an "organizational fit" perspective.
Book
Learning to Implement Enterprise Systems: An Exploratory Study of the Dialectics of Change
TL;DR: This paper reports on a comparative case study of 13 industrial firms that implemented an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and finds that both strong core teams and carefully managed consulting relationships addressed configuration knowledge barriers.
A critical success factors model for ERP implementation
Christopher P. Holland,Ben Light +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors have developed a framework to help managers successfully plan and implement an ERP project, which can support a business vision and strategy; a poor, decentralized one can break a company.
Journal ArticleDOI
Enterprise resource planning: A taxonomy of critical factors
TL;DR: A novel taxonomy of the critical success factors in enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation process is presented, based on a comprehensive analysis of ERP literature combining research studies and organisational experiences, which illustrates that ERP benefits are realised when a tight link is established between implementation approach and business process performance measures.