Enterprise Resource Planning Requirements Research Articles

Challenges and Prospects of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems in the Newly Chartered Public Universities in Kenya

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have been the most popular business management systems in the 21st century, providing benefits of real-time capabilities, enhancing organizational competencies and seamless communication for business in both small and large organizations. Today, most universities have begun replacing their legacy systems with ERP initiatives to improve management and administration. Though they are credited with major prospects of re-engineering the work processes, these initiatives present some challenges to the management of these universities. This study focused on the challenges and prospects of ERP systems in the newly chartered public universities in Kenya. A review of previous studies on the challenges and prospects of putting in place this framework in public sector including universities was done. A descriptive survey research design was used to select the staff in all the 24 newly chartered universities in Kenya, while simple random sampling method was used in choosing 120 respondents who were heads of departments. A five point Likert scale questionnaire was used for data collection. A reliability estimate of 0.69 was realized for the instrument using Cronbach reliability coefficient. Data collected was analysed using descriptive statistics and presented in tables and charts. The study established that management support is vital for any organization to be able to successfully implement and use ERP systems effectively. In addition, inadequate preparation by the universities to manage change, failure to involve end-users during the implementation stage, failure by the system vendors to modify the system to conform to the requirements of these universities, failure by the institutions to re-engineer their business processes to match ERP requirements and lack of effective end-user training were also cited as the challenges facing the success of the ERP systems in the newly chartered universities. The findings further indicated successful implementation of the system will eliminate redundant tasks and lead to an overall reduction of operational cost. It will also lead to easier access to reliable data and information, improved customer relationship and the ability to produce better reports and information are some of the prospects that majority of the respondents believe the ERP system will provide. This study may be useful to public universities management by helping them gain better understanding on how to utilize information technologies. It also provides information that will assist them in making informed decisions on the best ERP implementation strategies to be employed. Lastly, the study will creates a forum for discussions on ways of solving ERP challenges currently being faced by the newly chartered public universities in Kenya.

Investigating ERP Misalignment between ERP Systems and Implementing Organizations in Developing Countries

The adoption of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems by organizations from developing countries has increased dramatically. The continued growth of ERP adoption in developing countries is accompanied by high failure rates which makes it impossible for these organizations to enjoy the full realization of benefits. Many ERP systems’ failures are associated with the misalignment between the ERP requirements and the expectations of the client. 70 percent of ERP implementations fail to deliver the anticipated benefits with estimates that developing countries make up some 10 to 15 percent of global ERP sales (Hawari & Heeks, 2010). ERP systems do not usually fit the requirements of the implementing organizations in developing countries because of the different business practices, and legal and government regulations. There is a sizeable gap between the assumptions and requirements built into the designs of ERP systems and the realities of the client. Until academics, organizations, vendors and consultants understand better the phenomenon of misfit, the realization of benefits from ERP systems is likely to remain difficult and unpredictable on practical perspective. This paper seeks to investigate the complexities inherent in the ERP systems, which subsequently result in misalignment and this will equip decision makers to better prepare strategies that will increase the probability of realizing the desired results. This paper will contribute directly or indirectly to the reduction of failure rate of ERP projects on developing countries associated with misfit.

What Practitioners Think of Inter-organizational ERP Requirements Engineering Practices

Empirical studies on requirements engineering for inter-organizational enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have demonstrated that the ERP vendor-provided prescriptive models for ERP roll-outs make tacit assumptions about the ERP adopter’s context. This, in turn, leads to the implementation of suboptimal solutions. Specifically, these models assume that ERP implementations happen within a single company, and so they pay only scant attention to the stakeholders’ requirements for inter-organizational coordination. Given this backdrop, the first author proposed 13 practices for engineering the ERP coordination requirements in previous publications. This paper reports a confirmatory study evaluating those practices. Using an online focus group, the authors collected and analyzed practitioners’ feedback and their experiences to understand the extent to which the proposed practices are indeed observable. The study indicated very low variability in practitioners’ perceptions regarding 12 of the 13 practices, and considerable variability in their perceptions regarding the role of modeling inter-organizational coordination requirements. The contribution of the study is twofold: (1) it adds to the body of knowledge in the sub-area of RE for ERP; and (2) it adds to the practice of using qualitative research methods in empirical RE.

A case study of exploiting enterprise resource planning requirements

The requirements engineering (RE) processes have become a key to conceptualising corporate-wide integrated solutions based on packaged enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. The RE literature has mainly focused on procuring the most suitable ERP package. Little is known about how an organisation exploits the chosen ERP RE model to frame the business application development. This article reports an exploratory case study of a key tenet of ERP RE adoption, namely that aligning business applications to the packaged RE model leads to integral practices and economic development. The case study analysed a series interrelated pilot projects developed for a business division of a large IT manufacturing and service company, using Oracle's appl1ication implementation method (AIM). The study indicated that AIM RE improved team collaboration and project management experience, but needed to make hidden assumptions explicit to support data visibility and integrity. Our study can direct researchers towards rigorous empirical evaluations of ERP RE adoption, collect experiences and lessons learned for practitioners, and help generate more effective and mature processes when exploiting ERP RE methods.

The role of social and intellectual capital in achieving competitive advantage through enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems

Abstract Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software merges a firm's data, information flows and business processes into a single package. Vendors argue that ERP provides an extremely useful strategic resource to enhance competitiveness and make it possible for a firm to leverage its other resources more effectively and efficiently. In addition, they allege that ERP encourages a system-wide perspective that is a basis for collaboration and a systems orientation. However, an examination of ERP systems using criteria established in research on resource-based views of the firm and chaos/complexity theory indicates that these claims are overstated. Observation suggests that even if ERP is necessary to coordinate complicated, multifaceted operations, it is far from sufficient to promote a strong competitive position over the long term. Moreover, ERP systems fit best within mechanistic, clockwork organizations dominated by routine, highly programmed technologies and operations, yet it is the non-routine learning and change processes found in complex, self-organizing systems that enable firms to create distinctive competitive advantages from ERP outputs. ERP makes possible deep changes in relationships, culture, and behaviors that can be crucial sources of advantage in the knowledge economy, but the structures and cultures most able to achieve this level of change are a poor fit with ERP requirements. To reconcile this paradox, we propose a dual-core, loosely coupled organization that views ERP as an enabling technology to build and augment social and intellectual capital, rather than as an information technology (IT) solution for organizational inefficiencies. Propositions for using ERP as a foundation for social and intellectual capital formation are introduced. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Evaluating the value-added benefits of using requirements reuse metrics in ERP projects

Measurement programs often go astray and fail to reach full success because of misconceptions and differences in expectations about the benefits to be realized as a result of a measurement exercise. This paper suggests how to plan and apply requirements reuse measurement in a business focussed way, by doing frequent benefits assessments. We describe an approach to analyzing, evaluating and tracking the reuse metrics usage patterns in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects and the benefits gained from integrating requirements reuse measurement practices in the ERP requirements elicitation- modelling- negotiation cycle. Relationships between requirements measurement activities and requirements engineering activities and deliverables are studied in the context of SAP R/ 3 implementation projects.