ERP SYSTEMS AND BUSINESS PERFORMANCE

Transcription

1 INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS & FINANCE JOURNAL Vol. 6, No. 2, July-December (2011) : ERP SYSTEMS AND BUSINESS PERFORMANCE Jagbir Ahlawat and Punam Abstract: Purpose: To study the relationship between organizational use of ERP applications and organizational performance. This study is particularly interested in evaluating the factors affecting ERP systems implementation and to bring to the fore the relationships between organizational use of ERP applications and organizational performance to attain business improvement. For the purposes of this study, the researcher examined the impact of ERP system implementation on organizational performance. Design/methodology/approach: The objects investigated were 100 companies in national capital region Delhi that have implemented ERP system. Of those, only 32 companies agreed to participate in this survey. The present work is an empirical research based on both primary and secondary data. Self-administered questionnaire was the main source of colleting the primary data. Total 167 valid questionnaires were filled by the respondents from 32 companies in national capital region Delhi, India, that have implemented ERP system. Findings: The proposed study is considered to be more useful for Indian enterprises. This research found several factors, particularly focused on an Indian environment that can contribute to the success of an ERP system implementation. It is expected that the theory and research findings presented in this study can aid the development of the ERP research field. Practical implications: The findings provide practical guidance to managers implementing ERP systems. Discussion is based on the managerial perspective of the roles of ERP on business performance and hopefully can provide a link/step for advanced researches in exploring postimplementation ERP. Originality/value: The study confirmed that longer experience with ERP system has a positive impact on firm performance and on business process performance. Keywords: Enterprise resource Planning (ERP), Business performance, India Paper type: Research paper INTRODUCTION Today s aggressive marketing environment forces organizations should give a great importance to customer needs and listen to their voices, and supplier and customer should be closer and closer in order to produce goods or services based on the customer needs. The implementation and the use of an effective planning and control system in an organization improve productivity and performance of distribution while decreasing waiting times. The enterprise resource planning systems are examples of the most strategic tools, which provide robust tools for planning, coordination and control of the processes in the organizations. * Faculty, Maharaja Surajmal Institute, C-4, Janak Puri, New Delhi, dr.j.ahlawat@gmail.com, msi.placement@gmail.com

2 274 International Economics and Finance Journal Enterprise resource planning is a term derived from material resource planning and is an information system that integrates and automates all departments within a company; finance, human resource, manufacturing, logistics, etc., to help enable enterprise-wide management of resources. Enterprise resource planning systems are cross-functional and span the entire enterprise wide. All functional departments that are involved in operations or production have their functions integrated in one system. In addition to manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping, this integration also includes accounting, human resources, marketing, and strategic management. ERP includes the management of every operation in a value chain to minimize cost and time. In summary, ERP systems differ from traditional in-house or custom development systems in three ways: the user may have to make changes to business processes and procedures; the user may need to introduce customizations; and the user becomes dependent on the ERP vendor for assistance and updates (Somer and Nelson, 2003; Wu and Wang, 2005). ERP system allows companies to integrate different departmental information. It has evolved from a human resource management application to a tool that spans IT management. For many users, an ERP system is a do it all system that performs everything from entry of sales orders to customer service. It attempts to integrate the suppliers and customers with the manufacturing environment of the organization. The traditional application systems, which organizations generally employ, treat each transaction separately. They are built around the strong boundaries of specific functions that a specific application is meant to cater for. ERP stops treating these transactions separately as stand alone activities and considers them to be a part of interlinked processes that make up the business (Gupta, 2000). Although an ERP system is a pure software package, it embodies established ways of doing business. Studies have illustrated that an ERP system is not just a pure software package to be tailored to an organization but an organizational infrastructure that affects how people work and that it imposes its own logic on a company s strategy, organization, and culture (Davenport, 1998). The purposes of this study, the researcher examined the impact of ERP system implementation on organizational performance. 1. Relationship between Organizational use of ERP System, Quality Management Practices and Business Performance Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems can be regarded as one of the most innovative developments in information technology (IT) of the 1990s. With the growing interest of many organizations in moving from functional to process-based IT infrastructure, ERP systems have become one of today s most widespread IT solutions. What have motivated

3 ERP Systems and Business Performance 275 organizations to implement ERP systems are their integration and standardization capabilities, flexible client/ server architecture, and their abilities to drive effective business reengineering and management of core and support processes (Computer World, 1998) Organizational use of ERP system and performance With the organizational impacts of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems being widely recognized, an increasing number of organizations in various industrial sectors and of different sizes in the world have deployed these systems. Vendors and system consultants often claim that the best business practices are encapsulated in ERP system packages. Unfortunately, ERP adopting organizations have reported both favorable and unfavorable outcomes (Davenport, 1998; Stedman, 1999). In reality, many organizations have experienced enormous challenges after implementation, and some suffered greatly from disastrous ERP projects (Spitze, 2001; Fox, 2001). Such difficulty appears to be related to misfits in business processes and poorly managed organizational variables. Worse still, any of these challenges could easily be magnified by the complexity of ERP systems. The primary objective of this part of the study is to empirically explore the relationships between organizational use of ERP applications and organizational performance. 2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE ERP implementation refers to the stage of system planning, configuration, testing and final implementation. ERP use means ERP adoption or utilization. It refers to the experience of managing the operation of the system software in throughout the system life in the postimplementation stages (Nah et al., 2001) ERP System and Organizational Performance Organizational performance is the aggregation of ERP-enabled process improvements with metrics capturing bottom-line firm impacts (Melville et al., 2004). After reviewing studies on the impact of ERP systems on business performance (Shang and Seddon, 2002; Markus et al., 2000), one would expect a wide range of influences from ERP ranging from operational to strategic. Operational efficiency is usually reflected in cost reduction and productivity enhancement whereas strategic success is usually reflected in revenue growth and gains in market share. It is important to note that changes in organizational resources may not result in immediate success due to adjustment costs, learning and other factors. Benefits of ERP systems require longitudinal review of the organizational performance. Markus et al., (2000) provide evidence on the impact of ERP system use and overall firm performance by comparing return on assets, return on investments and asset turnover for ERP users and non-users. Their key results do not indicate a performance improvement for ERP system users. However, they find that the financial performance of users has not declined during their test period, whilst the performance of non-users has declined during the same period.

4 276 International Economics and Finance Journal Nicolaou et al. (2003) compare financial data of companies adopting enterprise wide systems and of a matched control group of firms. The results from a univariate analysis of performance differences across time periods show that firms adopting enterprise systems have significantly higher differential performance in their second year after the completion of the system than the control group. All these researches on the impact of ERP system on the performance of organizations provide valuable insights into a previously under-researched topic and they are similar in their approach in the ways that they use only aggregated, publicly available financial accounting data to measure performance; they do not clearly distinguish between overall firm performance and business process performance; and the dependent variables used are essentially only ERP system use and the time of ERP implementation. Matolcsy et al. (2005) performed a study and found that the use of ERP systems leads to sustained operational efficiencies and improved overall liquidity. In addition, some support was found for increased profitability some time after the adoption of ERP, and for improvements in accounts receivable management. Earlier approaches on ERP system use identified non-financial performance measures as proxies for financial value (Beretta, 2002; Irani, 2002). Only relatively recently, the discipline has come up with studies which for the first time provided evidence of the economic impacts of ERP system (Nicolaou et al., 2003; Matolcsy et al., 2005). The results of those studies point into the same direction, but are not entirely consistent. They all find some evidence of immediate or delayed increases in firm performance after ERP system adoptions, but the performance increases identified are evident only in very few systems. Interestingly, there is no agreement in the extant literature with regards to which of those indicators measure overall firm performance or business process performance best in the context of ERP system evaluation. There are even substantially different views as to whether certain indicators measure firm performance or business process performance. Financial ERP systems are doubtlessly the most important and most widely used ERP systems for firm performance, and they can also provide some valuable insights into business process performance (Dehning and Richardson, 2002; Matolcsy et al., 2005). These insights are, however, limited, especially if only publicly available data i.e. from annual reports, etc. are used. These highly aggregated data can only be used for a very general analysis of core processes in the value chain, e.g. the ability to turn over inventory quickly, but do not provide deeper insights into performance at the business process level (Kaplan and Norton, 1992). Hence, is as much as the quality management literature in not conclusive regarding measurement of organizational performance, particularly multi-factor performance, as a consequence of quality initiatives, and similarly because there is a dearth of studies regarding combined-erp effects on business performance, it is opportune to test the relationship between ERP implementation factors and performance.

5 ERP Systems and Business Performance RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY The next phase of research is to test the theory empirically. To meet the objective, an empirical study of various ERP system implemented organizations belonging to domains like manufacturing, finance and services in national capital region were undertaken. The present study proposes to understand the success of the ERP implementation on the basis of variables such as organizational performance and productivity. This chapter discusses the research objectives, research procedure which includes the overall research design, the sampling procedures, the data collection methods, the methods of data analysis, measures undertaken and statistical techniques used for Data Analysis Objectives of the Study To study the relationship between organizational use of ERP applications and organizational performance thereby examining the effect of operational process factors on business performance Research Design The study was explorative cum descriptive in nature. Survey was the predominant research methodology used in this work Data Sources The present work is an empirical research based on both primary and secondary data. The theory is basically developed from secondary sources of information and a thorough study of various academic works in the field has been attempted. Self-administered questionnaire was the main source of colleting the primary data. However, personal interviews were also conducted of the subjects in the light of same questionnaire. Perceptual inputs in the form of documentation were collected by personal visits to the subject of all the companies operating in national capital region (NCR), New Delhi Selection of Organizations The objects investigated were 100 companies in national capital region Delhi that have implemented ERP system. These 100 firms were contacted by phone, explaining the purpose of the research project and inquiring about the firm s willingness to participate. Of those, only 32 companies agreed to participate in this survey. The information executives or managers from these firms were solicited to serve as intermediaries for their organizations and distribute questionnaires. There was only one intermediary per firm and a prearranged number of questionnaires were presented in person to each intermediary Selection of Respondents A cross section of people from the selected organizations was selected as to get a better and wider perspective. Hence the sample consisted of the managers, professional employees

6 278 International Economics and Finance Journal without supervisory responsibility and general employees from all the departments of the various ERP system implemented organizations. The sampling technique employed in the study is convenience based non-probability sampling. This type of sampling can be adopted when the emphasis is on exploratory research. The questionnaire was administered to a total of 500 respondents in the entire selected organization of NCR-Delhi. To ensure a high response rate care was taken to personally administer as many questionnaires as possible, further constant follow-up was done and patience was maintained all throughout to ensure that the respondents filled the questionnaires. Totally, 500 questionnaires were successfully sent to 32 business organizations; 169 questionnaires were filled by the respondents, and 167 questionnaires were valid ones; thus the effective recovery rate was 33.4 per cent Questionnaire Development The items in the questionnaire were written in the form of statements and presented to the subjects to respond on a 5-point Likert scale. As the questionnaire was self-explanatory the respondents were asked to respond as per the instructions in the questionnaire. Overall, this self administered questionnaire comprised of two sections: Section-1 included all the participants from various organizations and 12 questions on individuals as well as organization s demographics. Section-2 enquired all the ERP system users and non-users about the relationship between organizational use of ERP system and business performance Hypotheses Formulation After an interdisciplinary theoretical investigation of the subject under research and an analysis of existing empirical studies, a set of 6 hypotheses was developed which are as shown in Table 3.1. Sr. No. Hypotheses Table 3.1 Table of Hypotheses 1 H1.1: The organization performance is better for ERP system users than for non- ERP system users. 2 H1.2: The longer the experience with ERP system of ERP system users, the better their organization performance. 3 H1.3: The organization s financial performance is better for ERP system users than for non- ERP system users. 4 H1.4: The longer the experience with ERP system of ERP system users, the better their organization s financial performance. 5 H1.5: The business process performance is better for ERP system users than for non- ERP system users. 6 H1.6: The longer the experience with ERP system of ERP system users, the better their business process performance.

7 ERP Systems and Business Performance 279 The final sample contained 167 ERP system users from 32 companies and 54 nonusers from 14 companies Characteristics of Respondent Firms 71.9 per cent of the respondent firms are from manufacturing industry; 53.1 per cent have over 150 employees; and 65.6 per cent have utilized ERP systems for more than 5 years. Table 3.2 Industry Type S. No. Industry Type Number of Companies Number of Respondents (Percentage) (Percentage) 1 Manufacturing 23 (71.9) 102 (61.1) 2 Finance 6 (18.8) 44 (26.3) 3 Service 3 (09.3) 21 (12.6) Total 32 (100) 167 (100) Size Table 3.3 Size of Companies Number of Companies (Percentage) < 50 2(6.3) (15.6) (25.0) >150 17(53.1) Total 32 (100) Company s experience Table 3.4 Experience of using ERP Systems Number of Companies (Percentage) < 1 year 1 (3.1) 1-2 Years 2 (6.3) 2-5 Years 8 (25.0) >5 Years 21 (65.6) Total 32 (100) 3.5. Characteristics of the Respondents In respondents demographic details female representation (26.3%) is low as compared to males (73.7%). This supports the fact that the gender ratio is highly skewed in educational institutions and hence in companies also the number of females is low.

8 280 International Economics and Finance Journal Basic Classification Table 3.5 Demographics of the Respondents Gender Male 123 (73.7) Female 44 (26.3) Work Experience Less than 5 Years 13 (7.7) 5-10 Years 84 (50.3) Years 33 (19.8) More than 15 Years 37 (22.2) Job Position Manager/Supervisor 32 (19.2) Professional employees without 63 (37.7) supervisory responsibility General employee 72 (43.1) Number of Respondents (Percentage) Approximately half i.e per cent of the sample consists of young managers between less than 5 Year up to 10 years of work experience whereas more than 40 per cent people have more than 10 years of work experience. In the sample 43.1 per cent respondents are general employees, and 37.7 per cent are the Professional staff without supervisory responsibility. Whereas only 19.2 per cent people are from managerial domain, this shows the need for training whenever there is a new system being implemented Data Analysis Method The data obtained from the survey were coded and fed into the computer. All the 67 items were indexed for final analysis. SPSS (Version14) was used for analysis and statistical tools like mean, standard deviation, t-test, correlation analysis and multiple regressions were used For Investigating Relationship between Organizational use of ERP System and Business Performance The final sample of 167 ERP system users from 32 companies, and 54 non-users from 14 companies participated in the survey for this part of the study. All ERP products (SAP AG, Oracle, and Peoplesoft) were verified to ensure that they really met the definition of ERP system used in this research. Due to the short experience of ERP systems, especially in NCR-Delhi, only thirty two organizations in the sample had implemented ERP system by the time the survey was conducted Limitations of the Study The study suffers from many limitations. The inability to draw a random sample of ERP system users is a well-known problem facing researchers using survey methodologies. In addition, self-selection bias is very likely to have occurred and it is difficult to measure. As limitations are inherent in all research investigations, it is important that these be brought to light. This study too suffers from certain limitations which are given below:

9 ERP Systems and Business Performance 281 The sample of the study is relatively small and to certain extent confined to NCR that poses difficulty in generalization of results. For firms that the researcher sampled had no close contacts, it is difficult to ascertain whether the person to whom addressed the questionnaire is the one that actually filled out the questionnaire. The questionnaire does not contain any negative question, and is the same scale is used for all the factors so routine ticking by respondents and its impact cannot be ruled out. Some elements of inaccuracy might have crept in because of wrong interpretations, of questions on the part of respondents. The generalizations occurring from this study are more conducive and are based on the perceptions of a limited particular group of ERP users and executives who were included. These limitations should be duly considered by future researchers in this area. 4. DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION The present chapter discusses the survey results and its implications both quantitatively and qualitatively in a detailed manner. The study now turns to look at the findings from the survey conducted at 500 subjects from 100 companies of NCR-Delhi. With regard to the survey, the final sample contained 167 ERP system users from 32 companies and 54 non-users from 14 companies. Only the companies who have already implemented ERP systems were included in the test group. Among the 167 respondents, 43.1 per cent respondents were general employees, 37.7 per cent were the professional staff without supervisory responsibility, whereas only 19.2 per cent people were from managerial domain per cent of the respondent firms were from manufacturing industry; 53.1 per cent of the companies were having over 150 employees; and 65.6 per cent companies have utilized ERP systems for more than 5 years. This resulted in a useable response rate of 33.4% Results Relationship between Organizational use of ERP System and Business Performance Performance of ERP System users and Non-ERP System Users In this analysis, the researcher tested for differences between ERP system users (167 valid responses) and non-users (54) with regards to the three levels of performance identified as business process performance, financial performance and overall performance. Conducting t-test on the responses from ERP system users and non-users, it was revealed that despite the fact that ERP system users on average scored higher in all dimensions of performance, it could not find any significant differences between the two samples, neither in terms of firm s financial or overall performance, nor in terms of business process performance along the ERP system use. These overall results are partly contradicting those of recent studies quoted in the literature review, which actually

10 282 International Economics and Finance Journal concluded that there are some significant differences in financial performance between ERP system users and non-users (Nicolaou et al., 2003; Matolcsy et al., 2005). What was even more surprising was the fact that ERP system users did not score significantly higher than the non users in the area of business processes. A closer look at all individual scores within the aggregate measure revealed that ERP system users did actually score higher in all 23 individual parameters (see table 4.1), but it also showed that these differences were only significant for relative level of manufacturing labor costs, relative level of finished goods inventory holding costs, time required to produce an item and percentage of shipping errors at the 5 per cent level. In the case of firm s financial and overall performance indicators, the ERP system users also showed higher means in all individual categories, but none of these differences were significant (see table 4.2 and table 4.3). Thus the hypotheses H1.1, H1.3 and H1.5 were rejected. Table 4.1 Relationship between ERP System use and Business Process Performance Sr. No. Parameters ERP system ERP non- Significance users system users (2-tailed) Mean Score Mean Score 1 Relative level of logistics and distribution costs Relative level of manufacturing labor costs * 3 Relative level of maintenance costs Relative level of re-work costs Relative level of materials inventory holding costs Relative level of obsolete inventory costs Relative level of work in progress inventory costs Relative level of finished goods inventory holding costs * 9 Speed at filling orders Percentage of deliveries made on time Stockout probability Backorder level Time required producing an item * 14 Percentage of shipping errors * 15 Percentage of customers who complain The extent to which you can change the output level of products produced 17 The ease with which you can change the output level of products produced 18 The extent to which you can change planned delivery dates The ease with which you can change planned delivery dates The extent to which you can change the variety of products produced 21 The ease with which you can change the variety of products produced 22 The extent to which you can introduce and produce new products 23 The ease with which you can introduce and produce new products Annotation: *p.05

11 ERP Systems and Business Performance 283 Table 4.2 Relationship between ERP System use and Organization s Financial Performance Sr. No. Parameters ERP system ERP non- Significance users system users (2-tailed) Mean Score Mean Score 1 Return on investment Operating profits Sales growth rate Cost reduction programs Cash-flow Annotation: *p.05 Table 4.3 Relationship between ERP System Use and Overall Organization Performance Sr. No. Parameters ERP system ERP non- Significance users system users (2-tailed) Mean Score Mean Score 1 Output Productivity Time Period per Cycle Quality System Employee Satisfaction Goodwill Corporate Social Responsibility Activities Annotation: *p ERP System Experience and Performance Further insights were expected by looking into the reasons for the partly surprising results by testing for performance differences with regards to ERP system experience and ERP system use. In the second test, the researcher divided the group of ERP system users into two subgroups of mature ERPS users and recent ERPS adopters. Median (five years) was used as a cut-off point, which also complies with recent research which suggests that there is a time-lag of benefit realization and that the positive impact on performance starts to become significant after approximately two years and tends to increase over years. The results of the t-test performed to identify differences between companies with longer ERPexperience and more recent adopters are shown in Table 4.4. In this test, an ERP system experience scale was used which measures the number of years between the go-live date and the day the survey was completed. The results of this test confirm the hypotheses (H1.2 and H1.4) with regards to the relationship between ERP system experience and firm s financial and overall performance, but not about the impact of ERP system experience on business process performance, rejecting the hypothesis H1.6.

12 284 International Economics and Finance Journal Table 4.4 Relationship between ERP System Experience and Firm Performance (Business Process Performance, Firm s Financial and Overall Performance) Sr. No. Parameters ERP ERP Significance Experience Experience (2-tailed) > 5 years 5 years Mean Score Mean Score 1 Business process performance Organization s financial performance * 3 Organization s overall performance * Annotation: *p SUMMARY OF FINDINGS This study was intended to provide both theoretical and practical insights into the implementation of an ERP system into Indian business environment. An ERP implementation is a large information system implementation project with a huge impact on a number of different areas regarding the organization that implements it. Identifying key success factors is impossible and ambiguous due to the complexity of an ERP implementation project, this research found several factors, particularly focused on an Indian environment, that can contribute to the success of an ERP system implementation. It is expected that the theory and research findings presented in this study can aid the development of the ERP research field. This study can be summarized as below Relationship between Organizational use of ERP System, Business Process Performance and Firm Performance The main objective of this part of the study was to find relationship between ERP system use and performance (business process performance, firm s financial and overall performance. The study used ERP system use and ERP system experience as independent variables and business process performance and firm performance as dependent variables. Perception-based measures were used to capture both financial and non-financial performance indicators. The researcher used t-test to identify performance differences between ERP system users and non-erp users, and then analyzed performance differences within the groups of ERP system users based on ERP system experience. This study is an empirical study investigating the impact of ERP system use on both core business processes performance and overall firm performance. Probably the most striking result is that it was not found any significant performance differences between ERP system users and the ERP system non-users, neither at the business process level, nor at the overall firm level. However, the study found that the longer ago an ERP system was initially implemented, the higher the overall firm performance, but again surprisingly not the business process performance.

13 ERP Systems and Business Performance 285 Finally, the study found no support for the hypotheses that ERP system users have significant higher performance scores at both the core business process level and at firm level. These findings contradict frequently claimed benefits of ERP system implementations. However, the study confirmed that longer experience with ERP system has a positive impact on firm performance and on business process performance Recommendations This section discusses the relevance of the study and recommends for future ERP implementation success. Possible new insight into ERP implementations focusing on Organizational use of ERP system, business process performance and firm performance factors would be to identify and manage these factors along with the other factors linked from the literature review to the current study s finding. Specifically, the research study recommends that an emphasis should be placed on informing the users of changes, getting user participation in the development and the implementation of the ERP system. The implementation of the ERP system, therefore, is ensuring that users will get and share technical and business knowledge through business process reengineering activities. How the ERP system is implemented and used, is of the essence with the organizations in today scenario, since a majority of the organizations have selected an ERP system approach to solve information needs within the organization. References Beretta, S. (2002), Unleashing the Integration Potential of ERP Systems: the Role of Process-based Performance Measurement Systems, Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp gies, Industrial Management and Data Systems, Vol. 100 No. 2, pp Davenport, T. H. (1998), Putting the Enterprise into the Enterprise Systems, Harvard Business Review, July/August, pp Dehning, B. and Richardson, D. J. (2002), Returns of Investments in Information Technology: A Research Synthesis, Journal of Information Systems, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp Fox, P. (2001), Throwing Good Money after Bad?, Computerworld, April 20, available at Gupta, A. (2000), Enterprise Resource Planning: the Emerging Organizational Value Systems, Industrial Management and Data Systems, Vol. 100, No. 3, pp Irani, Z. (2002), Information Systems Evaluation: Navigating through the Problem Domain, Information and Management, Vol. 40, No. 1, pp Kaplan, R. S. and Norton, D. P. (1992), The Balanced Scorecard - Measures that Drive Performance. Harvard Business Review, Vol. 70, No.1, pp Markus, M. L. and Tanis, C. (2000), The Enterprise System Experience - from Adoption to Success, in Zmud, R.W. (Ed.), Framing the Domains of IT Management: Projecting the Future Through the Past, Pinnaflex Educational Resources, Inc., Cincinnatti, OH, pp Markus, M. L., Axline, S., Petrie, D. and Tanis, C. (2000), Learning from Adopters Experiences with ERP: Problems Encountered and Success Achieved, Journal of Information Technology, Vol. 15, pp Matolcsy, Z., Booth, P. and Wieder, B. (2005), The Economic Benefits of Enterprise Resource P lanning Systems: Some Empirical Evidence, Journal of Accounting and Finance (forthcoming).

14 286 International Economics and Finance Journal Melville, N., K. Kraemer, et al. (2004) Review: Information Technology and Organizational Performance: An Integrative Model of it Business Value, MIS Quarterly Vol. 28, No. 2, pp Nah, F. and Wang, B. (2001), ERP + e-business = a new vision for enterprise system, in Dasgupta, S. (Ed.), Managing Internet and Intranet Technologies in Organizations: Challenges and Opportunities, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, PA, pp Nicolaou, A. I., Stratopoulos, T. and Dehning, B. (2003), Financial Analysis of Potential Benefits from ERP Systems Adoption, Journal of Business and Information Technology, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp Shang, S. and Seddon, P. (2002), Assessing and Managing the Benefits of Enterprise Systems: the Business Manager s Perspective, Information Systems Journal, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp Spitze, J. M. (2001), Inside a Global System Failure, CIO Magazine, February 1, available at archive/020101/passport_worldview.html (accessed April 26, 2004). Stedman, C. (1999), Tracking Changes - a Must in ERP Projects; Business users Sometimes Fail to Realize Importance, Computer World, pp Nah, F. and Wang, B. (2001), ERP + e-business = a new vision for enterprise system, in Dasgupta, S. (Ed.), Managing Internet and Intranet Technologies in Organizations: Challenges and Opportunities, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, PA, pp Wu, J. H. and Wang, Y. M. (2005), Measuring ERP Success: The Key-users Viewpoint of the ERP to Produce a Viable IS in the Organization. Computer in Human Behavior (in Press).