IT CAPABILITIES IN ERP MAINTENANCE – A REVIEW OF THE ERP POST-IMPLEMENTATION LITERATURE

With the maturing use of ERP systems, the management of their post-implementation phase is receiving increased attention. There is a need to understand how to manage post-implementation activities like ERP maintenance. ERP maintenance is a critical IT service provided by IT organizations in the ERP post-implementation phase, including activities to support and extend existing ERP systems. The extant research has focused on tasks related to ERP maintenance, but it lacks studies that provide insights into capabilities required to perform ERP maintenance successfully. This paper aims to reduce this gap, reviewing IT-related tasks, success and risk factors in the ERP post-implementation literature. Based on this review, eight IT capabilities on the functional level of ERP maintenance are proposed. Integrating these findings with previous IT capability research, the link between the identified ERP maintenance capabilities and firm-wide IT capabilities is examined