Control and coordination in global ERP configuration

Abstract

The dominant market for enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors has traditionally been the largest of multinational corporations. Until recently, most vendors (SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, etc.) have promoted a “one size fits all” solution built on “industry best practices.” This approach forced organizations to either conform to the “best practices” and configurations suggested by vendors and implementation consultants or embark on extremely costly reconfiguration of their ERP package. The study reviews the concepts of control, coordination, and their trade‐offs plus Bartlett and Ghoshal’s topology of firm strategy. Human resource issues are introduced as examples of organization elements that may or may not conform to the enterprise design structure within coordination and control. Finally, the concepts of control and coordination and the Bartlett and Ghoshal topology are combined to create a firm strategic orientation which is then matched to an ideal ERP configuration or enterprise information architecture.