Optimizing the Change Management of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems Implementations

Abstract

Although Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are being used widely all around the world, they also carry out many problems as well as their benefits. These systems are well known for enhancing cross functional efficiency and effectiveness through the integration of all information flowing throughout an organization. However, during different project life cycle stages of ERP systems, this integration may not be provided because of the formulation of incompatibilities, which are greater than the optimum level, among different parties like ERP system, processes of the organization and system users. Within this study, existing incompatibilities between these parties are modeled respectively. In common the model propose that the ERP product mostly matching with the processes of the organization should be selected, processes of the organization should be changed for being compatible with the ERP system and system users should be educated, new qualified people should be hired etc. for making the system and processes more familiar to people. Here the point is that all of these are done for keeping incompatibilities between the ERP system, processes, and people at minimum level because this minimalism will avoid optimization and utilization problems. This study not only handles problems of ERP from a newer perspective, but also provides insight to managers about managing the change and utilizing their resources efficiently for adopting the ERP software across the organization.