Successful ERP Systems A Guide for Businesses and Executives

This book is intended to be a guide for businesses and executives. This book does not attempt to be a Project Management book, as there are many books written on that topic. This book, however, is unique. Each year billions of dollars are spent by organizations to implement, manage, and maintain ERP systems. A simple browse through the Internet will demonstrate how challenging ERP implementations can be. “Success rates” are seen as quite low with time, costs, and effort typically being above planned and often significantly. Law firms “make a living” from “ERP’s gone bad.” Academia is investing more and more time and research into developing “Success Models” that not only attempt to objectively determine ERP success or failure but also attempt to be a proactive in that effort. But why? If ERP systems (and all their inherent functionality) can bring a true ROI to business, why are they so challenging? Why do they often deliver as “advertised”? And, why are they often seen as “failing”? This book brings a unique combination of years of experience in academics research and studies in regards to “ERP systems” with years of experience from a practitioner’s perspective. There are many keys to success; attention to detail, focus on the right items, being too lean versus being too “top heavy,” and keys to ERP value “dos and don’ts” that when coupled with academic research, statistics, and case studies complement each other and begin to shed light on how, what, when, and why “ERP systems” and their implementations are deemed failures or successes. And, more importantly, demonstrate what practitioners can do to counter any ERP failure risks. Keywords business process reengineering, enterprise resource planning, information technology implementation, system selectio