Strategic Dilemma With ERP System Implementation : Enterprise vs Consultant Perspective

Abstract: Over the past few years and up to date, many companies around the globe have implemented Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Implementing ERP system in an organisation is considered as an irresistible challenge, with the typical ERP system implementation approach. In correspondent, management in an organisation are facing critical challenges' to make decision on a specific ERP system implementation strategy, however, any considered decision would influence development, testing and ultimately the success of the implementation. Therefore, this thesis aims to examine solution to how organisation can decide or choose the best ERP system implementation strategy and explore the one that could be highly recommended by considering enterprise and consultant perspectives.   In order to accomplish the purpose of this thesis, qualitative and quantitative method of collecting and analysing data were adopted. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through the mean of questionnaire and structure interview. This is one of the reasons why this thesis can be viewed in an inductive and deductive approaches. To this end, exploratory and descriptive knowledge should be derived from this study. Analysis of this thesis has discovered that, there are many influencing factors in which organisation needed to be considered when making choice of a particular ERP system implementation strategy. These factors include: (i) Size and Complexity of an organisation (ii) Degree of internationalisation (iii) Number of requirements (iv) Nature of integration and (v) Skills and Experience of people within an organisation. In order to choose appropriate strategy for ERP system implementation, organisation should considered to implement a skeleton system in which other application can be added to the systems when it is in operation. Clarification of a business vision that would call for the legacy system replacement or re-modification, is also essential for an organisation to consider. Considering the above statements, organisation should be able to choose appropriate strategy that would fit their business processes. Nevertheless, Phased strategy is considered as the best or appropriate implementation strategy in which organisation can rely upon. Exploring Phased strategy simply means that, the problem of making choice of a particular implementation strategy will be minimal. That is; organisations that are willing to implement ERP system can easily consider phased strategy as their best alternative in order to attain success implementation.