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1 Introduction
A considerable volume of research has been carried out on enterprise wide systems and most notably on enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. This research has established that on the one hand, significant benefits can accrue to organisations implementing these systems ([18] Shang and Seddon, 2002) but on the other, many implementations are not conclusively successful ([5] Holland et al. , 1999). There is evidence that the degree to which organisations prepare themselves for their implementation projects has a bearing on whether they encounter many problems during implementation and ultimately, whether they achieve any of the benefits they sought ([15] Sammon et al. , 2004). It also appears that inadequate project management leads to short-term solutions being applied to the problems that occur during the implementation of ERP systems with substantial side effects when systems go live ([14] Saint-Leger and Savall, 2001). Previous research has indicated that the scope and complexity of ERP implementations are different from traditional analysis and design projects ([3] Davenport, 2000) suggesting specific project management strategies should be developed to tackle the specific challenges of such projects. In particular, it is argued that ERP projects are often associated with the widespread "re-engineering" of business practices, whereas traditional projects have smaller organisational "footprints" and are designed to match current practices. In this paper, we leverage our investigations of a very successful ERP implementation in a multinational pharmaceutical company (Pharma Inc.) to gain an insight into the project management strategy adopted to manage what was a successful ERP implementation. To facilitate the presentation of our findings from this case investigation we use the nine areas of the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK) framework.
The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. The next section presents the PMBOK framework, which has been put forward as a best practice vehicle to understand project management in information systems (IS) projects (Project Management Institute - [13] PMI, 2000). In the second section, we present the case study protocol we followed and the methods we applied to the case study of Pharma Inc. In the third section, we review the findings of the case under the nine headings of the PMBOK framework and, finally we propose conclusions towards excellent project management practices for ERP projects.