What Happens After Going Live With ERP Systems? Competence Centers Can Support Effective Institutionalization

The process of initiating, implementing and institutionalizing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software package in an organization is non-trivial. Competence centers (CC) have been proposed as a means to support organizational performance during the ongoing operations and maintenance phase of the life cycle. CC can be designed to support only the technical aspects of ERP software maintenance (e.g., updating tables as the business changes), but they can also be a resource for end user education, training, and support. In addition, they can be a focus of ongoing improvements in business processes and can enable retention of organizational knowledge about the rationale for software configuration decisions, which is critical for future upgrades, migrations, and conversions. This paper describes the role a CC can play by examining the problems that one firm experienced after it “went live” with ERP. We conclude with some suggestions for future research