Enterprise Resource Planning Maintenance Research Articles

Empirical Bibliography on Enterprise Resources Planning Systems Implementation

The rapid development in technology has affected the business world today compelling organizations to respond to these changes in order to gain and sustain a competitive edge within the similarly increasing competitive business environment. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is one of the technological tools that organizations are implementing in response to current increasingly competitive and demanding business world. Many business organizations are adopting ERP systems because of the strategic advantages associated with their adoption including, reduced costs, increased operational efficiency and effectiveness, automation, integrated business, and enhanced information flow. Therefore, the main goal of this research is help examine the challenges typical for the processes of ERP integration, use and maintenance. The research study and its findings are significant in terms of contemporary IT field, as it provides constructive evidence and facts regarding specific organization. Evidently, special and critical findings can be used in practice to prevent the negative effects from ERP integration at organizational and technological levels.

Modeling maintenance projects risk effects on ERP performance

Worldwide organizations have made important efforts to replace their legacy information applications by ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solutions. However, a suitable system implementation does not guarantee the ERP adoption success. This also depends on the modifications carried out in the system during the ERP maintenance. The implementation process of these changes is risky and may negatively affect application performance. Therefore, practitioners must handle the existing ERP maintenance risks in order to preserve the system performance. Hence, we propose an innovative and flexible technique to manage risks impacts on ERP performance.

Dynamic risks modelling in ERP maintenance projects with FCM

Firms adopting Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) have to maintain their applications until the end of the system life span. Proper ERP maintenance is a condition that is necessary to achieve the benefits expected of these packages. However, too many ERP maintenance projects result in failure. Numerous risks affect the development of these projects due to their size, complexity and high chance of failure. Therefore, risks management in ERP maintenance projects is a critical issue. In order to help practitioners, this paper studies the risks in this kind of projects. Particularly, we have built Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) of ERP maintenance risks. The main advantage of FCM lies in them being capable of modelling complex phenomena based on the experts’ perceptions. This tool models uncertainty and related events, imitating human reasoning. The tool proposed specifically models ERP maintenance project outcomes and risks perceptions, as well as their hidden interactions. Moreover, FCMs enable the developing of forecasting exercises through simulations. Practitioners would thus assess the joint influence of ERP maintenance risks on project outcomes. The results make known to practitioners which problems will arise if the risks are not treated, and how these will impact on the outcomes of projects. Therefore, the tool proposed would help them to manage ERP maintenance projects risks in a more effective and proactive way.

Forecasting Risk Impact on ERP Maintenance with Augmented Fuzzy Cognitive Maps

Worldwide, firms have made great efforts to implement Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Despite these efforts, ERP adoption success is not guaranteed. Successful adoption of an ERP system also depends on proper system maintenance. For this reason, companies should follow a maintenance strategy that drives the ERP system toward success. However, in general, ERP maintenance managers do not know what conditions they should target to successfully maintain their ERP systems. Furthermore, numerous risks threaten these projects, but they are normally dealt with intuitively. To date, there has been limited literature published regarding ERP maintenance risks or ERP maintenance success. To address this need, we have built a dynamic simulation tool that allows ERP managers to foresee the impact of risks on maintenance goals. This research would help professionals manage their ERP maintenance projects. Moreover, it covers a significant gap in the literature.

A multicriteria approach for risks assessment in ERP maintenance

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems cannot remain static after their implementation, they need maintenance. ERP maintenance is a key process required by the rapidly changing business environment and the usual software maintenance needs. However, these projects are highly complex and risky. So, the risks management associated with ERP maintenance projects is crucial to attain a satisfactory performance. Unfortunately, ERP maintenance risks have not been studied in depth. For this reason, this paper presents a general risks taxonomy. It gathers together the risks affecting the performance of ERP maintenance. Moreover, the authors use the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methodology to analyze the risks factors identified. It helps managers, vendors, consultants, auditors, users and IT staff to manage ERP maintenance better. Results suggest that the most critical stage in ERP maintenance is the first phase, which receives, identifies, classifies and ranks the software modification. The most important hazards in ERP maintenance are the cooperation and commitment of ERP users and managers.

Lessons Learned During a Decade of ERP Experience

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) literature concentrates on critical success factors for implementation. More recently, published work relates to ERP maintenance and upgrade practices. In papers concerning all phases of the ERP lifecycle, researchers commonly gather material via case studies of organizations comparatively new to ERP implementation, maintenance, or upgrade projects. This article uses a literature review detailing critical success factors and best practices during all phases of the ERP lifecycle to frame a case study on a large company with a decade of experience in supporting an ERP system through implementation, two major upgrades, one major domestic business merger, and two international business acquisitions. This article catalogs the company’s departures and concurrences with the published best practices and success factors over time, as well as the positive and negative consequences of its decisions. The company’s experience shows that straying from generally accepted best practices can lead to a successful outcome, and that portraying some success factors too well can exacerbate problems in other areas.

The Phases of ERP Software Implementation and Maintenance: A Model for Predicting Preferred ERP Use

Nearly all information technology educators and practitioners are familiar with the concept of a systems development life cycle (SDLC). The SDLC model is mainly based on new software development. The stages vary based on methodology, but mostly include planning and requirements definition, analysis, design of the new system, implementation, and post-implementation support such as maintenance and security. Less explored and known are the stages involved in commercial off the shelf installation. The actual implementation of commercial off the shelf software ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems is an area that is suggested to have a life cycle of its own. The importance of specific phases of this ERP implementation life cycle is the subject of this study. By surveying SAP enterprise resource planning implementations at two divisions of a major manufacturing company, a confirmatory factor analysis confirms the existence of four distinct phases of ERP implementation — preparation and training, transition, performance and usefulness, and maintenance. In addition, the overall preferred ERP use is studied and compared with these factors. It was found that the two significant phases which directly influenced preferred ERP use were preparation and training phase, and performance and usefulness phase. Neither transition nor maintenance was found to significantly affect preferred ERP use. This suggests to practitioners that more focus needs to be placed on the key determinants of preferred ERP use — preparation and training phase, and performance and usefulness phase.

Enterprise resource planning competence centres: a case study

PurposeTo describe the establishment of a Swedish enterprise resource planning (ERP) competence centre (CC), with assistance from Finnish colleagues and modelled on their CC.Design/methodology/approachBy outlining the input of Finnish colleagues and using the concept of the Finnish ERP CC, develops the history of the establishment of the Swedish model during 2001‐2003.FindingsFollowing a European IT consultancy company building a new Baan CC in Sweden brings new lessons from the field. Reasons for failure were shown to be: a dropping market, high entry barriers and an underestimation of resources needed for building a new ERP CC. Barriers preventing success in the ERP business were found.Practical implicationsCorporate templates, migrated sites combined with aggressive competitors and demanding price conscious customers have changed the ERP maintenance business and made the organisation hierarchical. Difficulties for new entrants in the ERP service business where customers pick and change supplier.Originality/valuePresented a unique case study that outlines and discusses the mentorship between Swedish and Finnish ERP CC initiatives.

An ERP-client benefit-oriented maintenance taxonomy

The worldwide installed base of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems has increased rapidly over the past 10 years now comprising tens of thousands of installations in large- and medium-sized organizations and millions of licensed users. Similar to traditional information systems (IS), ERP systems must be maintained and upgraded. It is therefore not surprising that ERP maintenance activities have become the largest budget provision in the IS departments of many ERP-using organizations. Yet, there has been limited study of ERP maintenance activities. Are they simply instances of traditional software maintenance activities to which traditional software maintenance research findings can be generalized? Or are they fundamentally different, such that new research, specific to ERP maintenance, is required to help alleviate the ERP maintenance burden? This paper reports a case study of a large organization that implemented ERP (an SAP system) more than three years ago. From the case study and data collected, we observe the following distinctions of ERP maintenance: (1) the ERP-using organization, in addition to addressing internally originated change-requests, also implements maintenance introduced by the vendor; (2) requests for user-support concerning the ERP system behavior, function and training constitute a main part of ERP maintenance activity; and (3) similar to the in-house software environment, enhancement is the major maintenance activity in the ERP environment, encompassing almost 64% of the total change-request effort. In light of these and other findings, we ultimately: (1) propose a clear and precise definition of ERP maintenance; (2) conclude that ERP maintenance cannot be sufficiently described by existing software maintenance taxonomies; and (3) propose a benefits-oriented taxonomy, that better represents ERP maintenance activities. Three salient dimensions (for characterizing requests) incorporated in the proposed ERP maintenance taxonomy are: (1) who is the maintenance source? (2) why is it important to service the request? and (3) what––whether there is any impact of implementing the request on the installed module(s)?

A decision framework for enterprise resource planning maintenance and upgrade: A client perspective

AbstractOver the last decade, many large organizations have been shifting from developing their own information system (IS) to licensing and installing large software packages known as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. These organizations now face the challenge of maintaining these costly systems and many are about to make their first upgrade decisions. The study reported herein aims to address the following research questions from the ERP‐client perspective: (1) What are the fundamental factors driving ERP maintenance and upgrade decisions? (2) How do these factors differ from those for traditional custom, in‐house software? and (3) Do existing software and hardware replacement models suffice for ERP maintenance and upgrade decision modeling? A single case study method and empirical data analysis were conducted and are presented here. We observe that ERP maintenance and upgrade characteristics are indeed unique in three ways: (1) most organizations maintain and upgrade their ERP systems in order to realize increased business benefits from the systems; (2) a new version upgrade reduces the number of ERP‐client‐done enhancement modifications; and (3) a new version upgrade potentially reduces future legal change patch (LCP) maintenance distributed by the ERP vendor. It was also found that on average LCP maintenance is almost as costly as user enhancements. Based on these findings, we conclude that the existing in‐house software and hardware replacement models are insufficient for ERP situations. We propose a preliminary ERP decision model that overcomes the observed insufficiencies. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Characteristics of ERP software maintenance: a multiple case study

AbstractA multiple case study approach was employed to identify maintenance activities pertaining to enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation, classify them into maintenance categories, and assess their relative frequency at various stages of the ERP maintenance lifecycle. Five maintenance categories (corrective, adaptive, perfective, preventive, user support) were identified from a review of the literature on software maintenance. A new category pertaining to ‘communication, coordination and knowledge exchange with external parties’ and herein labeled ‘external parties’ is introduced to highlight the supporting role of external parties in ERP maintenance. This category includes reporting problems to vendors and consultants, tracking their progress towards problem resolution, and coordinating work and relations with vendors, consultants, and external user‐organizations. This study also highlights some differences between maintenance trends of ERP versus traditional systems. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.