AWARENESS OF ORGANIZATIONAL READINESS IN ERP IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS: RESULTS FROM CASE STUDIES

The literature on ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems implementation is replete with stories of unsuccessful project outcomes. One of the issues that have attracted relatively little research is the level of firm's awareness about organizational problems that can occur in the course of the implementation process, and that represents one of the main reason of the large amount of unsuccessful implementation project. The goal of this article is to explore this issue through the use of three case studies from the US realized in the course of a visiting research period the authors were involved in. The data from the case studies is used to demonstrate whether the implementation teams had been aware, before the implementation project started, of the organizational problems and how they were able to measure the organizational readiness of the firm. Based on the unique patterns of the implementation process in each of the three different case studies, broader issues of ERP implementation are explored and directions for future research on change management in ERP implementation are proposed