Factors Affecting ERP Implementations: Client and Consultant Perspectives

Abstract

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are becoming popular among business organizations globally as well as locally. The main reason is that the corporate benefits gained through such implementations. However, in the event of such a project failing, the company has to incur a huge loss. Therefore, identifying the issues involved with the ERP implementation is of paramount importance. This paper aims to identify factors affecting the successful implementation of ERP projects, find out the level of practice of each factor in Sri Lankan organizations and recommend best practices to minimize the ERP project failures. The findings of this research are based on a questionnaire survey performed among 31 client organizations and 32 ERP consultants selected through judgmental sampling method. There are 3 factors each for client and consultant perspectives where the level of practice is poor, they are; product selection procedure, project planning, client commitment, competency of consultants and communication of support requirements during the pre-implementation stage. Except for above, level of practice of rest of the factors is good. Set of guidelines has been suggested to overcome the poorly practiced implementation factors in order to follow in future ERP implementations for both clients and consultants.