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Keywords
Resource management systems, Information systems, Implementation, BPR
Abstract
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is the dominant strategic platform for supporting enterprise-wide business processes. However, it has been criticised for being inflexible and not meeting specific organisation and industry requirements. An alternative, best of breed (BoB), integrates components of standard package and/or custom software. The objective is to develop enterprise systems that are more closely aligned with tile business processes of an organisation. A case study of a BoB implementation facilitates a comparative analysis of the issues associated with this strategy and the single vendor ERP alternative. The paper illustrates the differences in complexity of implementation, Levels of functionality, business process alignment potential and associated maintenance.
Introduction
Single vendor-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems dominate the IT landscape but have proved problematic for some organisations. ERP systems are generally implemented to overcome the maintenance difficulties associated with custom developments as they offer a clean slate through a common data set and suite of integrated applications (Holland and Light, 1999a; Davenport, 1998; Appleton, 1997). If, however, organisations implement an ERP system but change the implicit business model, by modifying source code, this recreates the legacy problems and disregards the advantages of a standard package-based IT strategy. Standard packages, for example, can increase development speed, reduce development staff requirement, and offer a constant state-of-the-art IT capability through upgrades (Price Waterhouse, 1996). While these benefits are debatable, radically changing standard software will:
* increase development time;
* increase staff requirement during and after implementation;
* reduce capability to take upgrades;
* counteract the standardisation and system integrity that was originally required.
Furthermore, the business processes implicit with the ERP system are purported to represent best practice and a more competitive business model. Although the proceeding issues offer support for organisations to reengineer work in line with standard software this can increase the complexity of implementation (Holland and Light, 1999b; Davenport, 1998). Organisations also argue that ERP software functionality is often lacking, the implicit business model does not represent their own and therefore reengineering business processes in line with this presents major difficulties. For example, Reebok has worked with SAP to overcome these problems but still cannot migrate to a single vendor solution (Stedman, 1999a, 1999b, 1999c; Orenstein,...