Adoption of ERP system for operations management in SMEs

The fast development of the IT in the society of today has led to that more SMEs rely on ERP systems. Especially, IT has facilitated the management of the flow of goods within and between organizations and have made lead times more effective and also have increased the overview of the flow of goods. This will help SMEs obtain a competitive advantage. The aim of this paper is analyze the factors influencing SMEs adoption of ERP systems. A qualitative case study is conducted within a company which both is engaged in manufacturing and project work. The company runs service projects for its customers and at the same time they produce articles both for sale and for use within the service projects. An ERP system can also serve as an overall system for the administration, the production and inventory management in the company. However, there are important factors to take into account in the adoption phase, related to the technological infrastructure, the organizational challenges as well as environmental relations in order to decide on an implementation on an ERP system. It is of a critical importance that the SME really change their routines in order to follow the processes implemented in the ERP system. Otherwise, the company runs the risk to be stuck in its previous and ineffective inventory management processes, regardless of investments in the ERP system and the technological infrastructure