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Abstract
Purpose - As the number of organizations that have implemented enterprise resourceplanning (ERP) systems unsuccessfully increase, it is necessary to establish the impediments in ERP implementations and the extent to which these impact the success of ERP projects. This study aims to identify the critical impediments that large organizations face in the implementation of ERP systems, and the impact of these impediments on overall success of ERP projects by a survey of Fortune 500 organizations.
Design/methodology/approach - A survey was prepared based on 47 impediments identified from previous ERP implementation studies.
Findings - This study finds that most of critical impediments are from functional coordination problems related to inadequate support from functional units and coordination among functional units, the project management related to business process change, and change management related to resistance of users. In this study, impediments are categorized based on project phases, and differences in the impediments the organizations faced between less successful and more successful organizations are found.
Originality/value - This research provides significant implications for industry managers engaged in large-scale enterprise system implementations. Our survey results suggest that understanding new requirements for ERP implementation such as functional coordination is more critical issues than understanding technical features of ERP system.
Keywords Manufacturing resource planning, Cross-functional integration, Change management
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are commercial software packages that enable the integration of transaction-oriented data and business processes throughout an organization (Markus and Tanis, 2000). As increasing numbers of organizations across the globe have chosen to build their IT infrastructure around this class of off-the-shelf applications, there has been a greater appreciation for the challenges involved in implementing these complex technologies. Although ERP systems can bring competitive advantage to organizations, the high failure rate in implementing such systems is a major concern (Davenport, 1998). A number of prominently publicized failures have underscored the frustrations and even total meltdowns that enterprises go through in implementing ERP systems. Allied Waste Industries, Inc. decided to pull the plug on a $130 million system built around SAP R/3, while another trash hauler, Waste Management, Inc., called off an SAP installation after spending about $45 million of an expected $250 million on the project. Hershey Food Corp. has also held SAP...