Communicating Requirements for ERP Tendering, the Case of International Organizations

Abstract

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems can support business processes in different areas in international or- ganizations. The focus of ERP developers on the private and public sectors has widened the gap between user require- ments and ERP system capabilities in deployments in inter- national entities by preventing ERP vendors from learning and addressing needs that are unique to international or- ganizations. This article presents actual experience during the early stages of the selection process of an ERP package in an international organization. It analyzes how to develop a Request for Proposal able to convey the needs of interna- tional organizations to ERP providers/integrators and that will effectively support an ERP application selection proc- ess. user requirements should be identified, and on how RFP could be formulated, in ERP implementations in interna- tional organizations, beyond some general procurement guidelines and principles applied in the public and private sectors. In describing some work at an early stage of the ERP system selection process in an international organiza- tion, and in suggesting some guidelines on RFP preparation for ERP systems in this environment, this work intends to provide insight in these areas, as well as to propose ideas that could be used in future information systems deploy- ments, not only in international organizations, but also in companies from the public or private arenas. As far as the authors know, very little has been done to specifically address user requirements for ERP deployment and ERP system customization in the context of interna- tional organizations, beyond a few internal case studies where actual experience has been briefly described. Due to the increasing presence and importance of international or- ganizations, this research could also be of interest for selec- tion processes in future ERP deployments, not only for in- ternational entities, but also for private companies and pub- lic sector organizations. This is also a good opportunity to take on requirement analysis in an area of extensive appli- cability and interest. Likewise, this work is related to the significant area of software selection, discussing ideas that are not only applicable to the ERP field, but also to the Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) and Best-Of-Breed (BOB) arenas. This article is organized as follows. Section 2 provides background on international organizations and Enterprise Resource Planning systems. The ERP acquisition process is briefly reviewed in Section 3, while information on the con- tent and use of needs document and some constraints of the RFP are discussed in sections 4 and 5, respectively. Section 6 describes the RFP preparation process in an international organization for the selection and acquisition of an Enter- prise Resource Planning system. Using the knowledge ob- tained during this procedure, a development approach for RFP in international environments is presented in 7. Related work and some concluding remarks close the article.