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I
CRITICAL FACTORS FOR SUCCESSFUL
POST-IMPLEMENTATION OF
ERP SYSTEMS
A study submitted in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Science in Information Management
at
THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD
by
CHIA-TING KUO
September 2010
II
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The completion of this dissertation has been one of the most significant challenges I
have ever had in my academic life. Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to
offer my deepest gratitude to all of those who supported me in any respects during
this important period of time since it would have been next to impossible to
accomplish this dissertation without them. There are some who I would like to
particularly thank to:
First of all, I am heartily thankful to my supervisor, Dr. G.C. Alex Peng, whose
guidance, support and encouragement from the beginning to the end of this
dissertation enabled me to develop this from none to this point.
Secondly, I am grateful to all participants in the study for providing valuable time
and experiences that contributed critical parts of this dissertation. And I particularly
appreciate the main contact of the ASE Inc. for this study, HUI-CHUN YEN, who
provided the extra time, effort and full support that enabled this study to conduct and
finish the case study in such limited time.
Lastly, I provide my best regards to all of those who psychologically supported and
encouraged me during the completion of the dissertation.
III
Abstract
The literature reveals a gap in ERP post-implementation. Previous researches have
mostly focused on the critical success factors (CSFs) of ERP implementation where
it has been recognised that the implementation is not the end of the ERP journey but
a new beginning.
The study aimed to bridge the gap in the existing ERP literature by identifying the
CSFs of ERP post-implementation and developing the ontology for the specific area.
A multiple method was introduced. Firstly, an extensive literature was reviewed to
identify potential CSFs of the adopted ERP system. The identified CSFs was then
analysed and classified to construct the ontology of CSFs of ERP post-
implementation. Secondly, a questionnaire was developed, based on the established
ontology, and was sent to 183 participants through e-mail with the enclosed URL of
the on-line questionnaire. They consist of the operational managers, system users and
IT experts of an ERP-experienced company (ASE Inc.). This resulted in 50.27%
response rate with 92 usable questionnaires. Lately, the top CSFs were extracted to
conduct a set of 6 interviews to in-depth understand the importance of the factors.
The ontology of CSFs of ERP post-implementation consists of 28 factors that
classified into four main categories, namely organisation, system, personnel and
external resource along with several sub categories, was developed. The result of the
questionnaire survey shows that the participants‟ perceptions to the ontology are
overall positive. The results of the interviews emphasised the importance of the top
11 factors, which supported and complement the justifications provided in the
ontology of this study.
The established ontology has been overall confirmed in this study. And the CSFs in
organisation category were perceived as the most important CSFs to the success of
post-implementation ERP. System, personnel and external resource were identified
as the second, third and fourth respectively. The future studies can replicate and
extend the ontology to examine it in different ERP-adopted organisations to further
prove or refine the ontology provided in the present study.
IV
List of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND 1
1.1.1 INTRODUCE TO ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING 1 1.1.2 THE HIGH FAILURE RATE IN ERP IMPLEMENTATION 2 1.1.3 CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR ERP SYSTEMS 3 1.1.4 THE IMPORTANCE AND GAP IN POST-IMPLEMENTATION RESEARCH 4
1.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND OBJECTIVES 5
1.2.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 5 1.2.2 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES 5
1.3 RESEARCH APPROACH 5
1.4 STRUCTURE OF THE DISSERTATION 6
2. LITERATURE REVIEW 8
2.1 ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING 8
2.1.1 BACKGROUND OF ERP 8 2.1.2 MOTIVATIONS AND BENEFITS OF THE ERP 9 2.1.3 CHARACTERISTICS OF ERP SYSTEMS 10
2.2 ERP LIFE CYCLE 12
2.2.1 TRADITIONAL SOFTWARE LIFE CYCLE V.S. ERP LIFE CYCLE 12 2.2.2 THE ERP JOURNEY 13 2.2.3 THE STAGES OF ERP JOURNEY 13 2.2.4 A PROPOSED ERP JOURNEY AND DEFINITION OF POST-IMPLEMENTATION 16
2.3 CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR ERP SYSTEMS 17
2.3.1 DEFINITION OF CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS 17 2.3.2 CURRENT LITERATURE ON CSFS FOR ERP SYSTEM 18 2.3.3 A GAP IN CSFS OF ERP POST-IMPLEMENTATION 20
2.4 SUMMARY 22
3. METHODOLOGY 24
3.1 RESEARCH APPROACH 24
3.2 RESEARCH DESIGN 24
3.2.1 STAGE 1: RESEARCH ORIENTATION 25 3.2.2 STAGE 2: LITERATURE REVIEW FOR IDENTIFYING POTENTIAL CSFS 25 3.2.3 STAGE 3: CASE STUDY 26 3.2.3.1 ABOUT THE SINGLE CASE 26 3.2.3.2 THE ACCESS OF THE DATA WITHIN THE CASE COMPANY 27
3.3 DEVELOPMENT OF ONTOLOGY OF CSFS OF ERP POST-IMPLEMENTATION 27
3.4 QUESTIONNAIRE COMPONENT 28
3.4.1 QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN 28 3.4.2 PARTICIPANTS OF QUESTIONNAIRE SURVEY 29 3.4.3 DATA COLLECTION BY QUESTIONNAIRE 30 3.4.3.1 PILOT TEST 30
V
3.4.3.2 QUESTIONNAIRE ADMINISTRATION 30 3.4.4 QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS 31
3.5 INTERVIEW COMPONENT 32
3.5.1 INTERVIEW DESIGN 32 3.5.2 PARTICIPANTS OF INTERVIEW 32 3.5.3 DATA COLLECTION BY INTERVIEW 33 3.5.3.1 BEFORE INTERVIEW 33 3.5.3.2 THE INTERVIEW 33 3.5.3.3 AFTER INTERVIEW 33 3.5.3.4 INTERVIEW ADMINISTRATION 34 3.5.4 QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS 34
3.6 SUMMARY 35
4. ONTOLOGY OF CSFS OF ERP POST-IMPLEMENTATION 36
4.1 ORGANISATION FACTORS 36
4.2 SYSTEM FACTORS 39
4.3 PERSONNEL FACTORS 43
4.4 EXTERNAL RESOURCES FACTORS 46
4.5 ONTOLOGY OF CSFS FOR ERP POST-IMPLEMENTATION 47
5. QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS 50
5.1 GENERAL FINDINGS 50
5.2 FINDINGS OF THE INVESTIGATION OF THE ONTOLOGY 52
5.3 KEY FACTORS 61
5.4 SUMMARY 62
6. QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 64
6.1 THE EMPIRICAL PERCEPTIONS TO THE IMPORTANCE OF THE KEY FACTORS 64
6.2 SUMMARY 75
7. FURTHER DISCUSSION FOR FINDINGS 77
8. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION 79
8.1 CONCLUSION 79
8.2 RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS 80
8.3 RESEARCH LIMITATIONS 80
8.4 RECOMMENDATION FOR FUTURE RESEARCH 81
APPENDIX A: QUESTIONNAIRE 82
APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW GUIDE 86
REFERENCES 88
VI
List of Tables
TABLE 1: THE INTERVIEW PARTICIPANTS 32
TABLE 2: ONTOLOGY OF CSFS FOR ERP POST-IMPLEMENTATION 47
TABLE 3: MEANS OF THE 28 CSFS LISTED BY CATEGORY 53
TABLE 4: FREQUENCY TABLE FOR CSFS OF ERP POST-IMPLEMENTATION 57
TABLE 5: MEAN RANKING OF CSFS BY DEGREE OF IMPORTANCE IN ERP EXPLOITATION 59
TABLE 6: KEY FACTORS OF ERP POST-IMPLEMENTATION SUCCESS 61
List of Figures
FIGURE 1: THE FRAMEWORK OF THE RESEARCH 25
FIGURE 2: THE DISTRIBUTION OF QUESTIONNAIRE SENDING AND RECEIVING 31
FIGURE 3: RESPONDENT PROFILE BY ROLE 51
FIGURE 4: RESPONDENT BY THE PARTICIPANT EXPERIENCE IN PRIOR ERP PROJECTS 51
FIGURE 5: RESPONDENT BY THE DURATION OF THE USE OR MAINTENANCE ON THE SYSTEM 52
1
1. Introduction
This chapter consists of four main parts. The background of this study is first
introduced by discussing the enterprise resource system, the high failure rate, critical
success factor, and the importance and gap in post-implementation. The research
questions and objectives are then raised to response to the research background.
Followed by a brief introduction of research approach is given. This chapter
concludes with the structure of the dissertation.
1.1 Research Background
1.1.1 Introduce to Enterprise Resource Planning
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are defined as “configurable information
system packages that integrate information and information-based processes within
and across functional areas in an organisation” (Kumar and Hillegersberg, 2000: 55);
the information integrated in an ERP system cover a company-financial, accounting
information, human resource information, supply chain information and customer
information (Davenport, 1998). In other words, the organisations that have
implemented ERP systems can (Willis and Willis-Brown, 2002: 35):
1. Share common data and activities throughout the entire enterprise;
2. Automate and integrate the critical parts of its business processes;
3. Generate and access information in a real-timed environment
Indeed, ERP systems have been threw high attentions by modern organisations as the
capabilities provided are believed that can lead them to survive in the competitive
business world today. According to the AMR research, the total ERP market revenue
was over $28 billion by 2006, and a rapid growth was estimated to be continuously
seen in the following years, with the estimation of an amount of about $32 billion
and $47 global market for the ERP between 2007 and 2011 (Jacobson et al., 2007).
The reason that can reflect the figures is: a number of benefits, as the result of
implementation of ERP systems, can be received by those organisations that have
initially invested in the costly systems, such as the reduction of costs in both
operation and maintenance, quality information for intelligent decision making, and
2
facilitation of process or structural change and improved productivity (Klaus et al.,
2000; Shang and Seddon, 2000; Barki and Pinsonneault, 2002; Rashid et al., 2002;
Kamhawi, 2008; Federici, 2009; Law et al., 2009). That is, ERP systems can lead
organisations toward a higher level of productivity, effectiveness, and organisational
performance (Davenport, 1998; Klaus et al., 2000; Mabert et al., 2003; Ifinedo et al.,
2010) because of the integration of business processes, systems, and information
within an organisation (Markus and Tanis, 2000). Consequently, adopted firms can
stand on advantaged positions among their competitors through using the successful
implemented ERP as their competitive weapon because of the benefits gained from
the systems.
1.1.2 The High Failure Rate in ERP Implementation
However, the history has told us that implementing such system is obvious not an
easy mission and an unsuccessful experience can be very painful.
Almost 90% of ERP implementation projects are over the time scale and budget that
original planned, and over 50% of projects failed to meet the desired outcomes
(Martin, 1998)
. . . many ERP systems still face resistance, and ultimately, failure
(Aladwani, 2001: 266)
. . . between 50 percent and 75 percent of US firms experience some degree of
failure . . . One recent survey revealed that 65 percent of executives believe ERP
implementation has at least a moderate chance of hurting their business
(Umble and Umble, 2002: 26)
. . . three quarters of the ERP projects are considered failures and many ERP
projects ended catastrophically
(Rasmy et al., 2005: 1)
. . . failure rates estimated to be as high as 50 per cent of all ERP implementations
(Muscatello and Parente, 2006: 61)
3
. . . 70 percent of ERP implementations fail to deliver anticipated benefits
(Wang et al., 2007: 200)
The reason that large amount of firms failed implementing ERP systems is not
simple. It is commonly said that implementing ERP systems successfully cannot only
focus on technology or processes, but people (Bingi et al., 1999). In other words, the
factors in not only technical but all aspects need to be carefully considered before,
during and after implementing ERP system in an organisation. Many firms, however,
have never took all of them into account until the disasters actually happened to them
(Gargeya and Brady, 2005). Furthermore, the implementation is generally expensive
because it is an organisation-wide information system which requires both in-house
and external professional knowledge and resources (Nah et al., 2003). Thus, the
research related to its success is vital in ERP research area. And it is not surprising
that a wide range of studies have responded to the demand of the topic in order to
lead those firms who intend to adopt or are adopting ERP systems, to the right
directions to success.
1.1.3 Critical Success Factors for ERP Systems
It is clear to note a fact that the related discussion of the CSFs is one significant topic
in the ERP research area. In fact, the concept of CSFs in information systems (IS) or
information technology (IT) related literature is well studied (Somers and Nelson,
2004). But it is argued that the CSFs of ERP system can be differ from other
traditional systems and it therefore should be discussed as an independent topic, the
distinctions between ERP system and traditional systems include the scale, scope,
complexity, organizational changes, project costs, and need for business process re-
engineering (Somers and Nelson, 2001). Consequently, numerous authors (e.g. Nah
et al., 2001; Umble and Umble, 2001; Somers and Nelson, 2001) have worked hard
to identify the factors that can potentially influence the outcome of ERP
implementation or adoption in order to provide a list that can be utilised to prevent a
disaster in the adopted system, and to therefore direct the adopters toward to success.
Nonetheless, the large amount of studies regarding the CSFs for ERP system mostly
encircled the implementation not post-implementation.
4
1.1.4 The Importance and Gap in Post-implementation Research
Companies that desire to receive the benefits of ERP systems should be aware that
“going live” point is not the end of ERP transformation journey. It is defined in
Consulting (1998)‟s study that the ERP transformation journey consists two different
waves or phases, namely first and second waves, and the border between these two
phases is the point of “going live”. The first wave refers to the effort necessary to
achieve the milestone of „‟going live” while the second wave or called post-
implementation in the present study refers to the activities that are undertaken after
ERP has been adopted, in order to maximise the value and return on organisations
investments (Willis and Willis-Brown, 2002). Meanwhile, It is pointed out by resent
researches that the discussion in ERP field should shift focus, along with the current
firms‟ steps in the development of ERP systems, from the stage of implementation to
that of post-implementation (or post-adoption, exploitation), as the ignorance in this
stage can turn an initial successful ERP implementation into a disaster in an adopted
firm (Peng and Nunes, 2009a). Despite the importance of post-implementation stage
has been increasingly recognised, only a rare amount of the studies based on the
stage have been carried out in ERP area to date (Kwon and Zmud, 1987; Staehr et al.,
2002; Gattiker, 2005; Peng and Nunes, 2009a).
By way of conclusion, despite a wide range of the studies associated with critical
success factors of ERP system has been well established, the foci of those researches
mostly project on its implementation stage. Meanwhile, it is suggested that “go live”
is not the destination of ERP journey but a beginning of the post-implementation
stage and the unawareness for the stage can break the dream of the organisations who
have been investing a great amount of money and time on their ERP systems. For
these reasons, the research of CSFs for post-implementation ERP systems must
emerge to bridge the crucial gap observed in current literature and it is therefore
worthwhile to be carried out in this study.
5
1.2 Research Questions and Objectives
1.2.1 Research Questions
As the invisibility of CSFs of ERP post-implementation in the existing literature, the
questions require to be answered here are:
1. What are the potential critical factors for ERP exploitation or post-
implementation success?
2. Which factors are the most important in the stage?
1.2.2 Research Objectives
In order to answer the questions listed, the objectives that this study attempts to
achieve are:
1. To conduct an extensive literature review along with empirical
assessment to identify the potential CSFs for ERP post-implementation
phase;
2. To establish an ontology of potential CSFs for the implemented ERP
systems;
3. To examine the developed ontology and prioritise the identified CSFs;
4. To identify the key factors among the predefined factors and to in-depth
understand the importance from an overall view.
1.3 Research Approach
This research presents the results of empirical study that aims at bridging the crucial
research gap found in current literature. An extensive systematic review, which
focused on theoretical studies and case studies, was conducted at the first stage of the
study. As a result of the review, a theoretical ontology, which consists of 28 potential
ERP CSFs that can critically influence the success of ERP systems in post-
implementation stage, was developed as the outcome of the first stage. Followed by a
single-case study was conducted at the second stage. A questionnaire was
constructed based on the 28 pre-defined factors, was used to gain a comprehensive
view for the factors from the operational managers, system users and the IT experts
of the experienced case company in terms of both adoption and post-adoption ERP
6
system. The complete online questionnaire was distributed to 183 participants who
consist of 16 managers, 135 users and 32 IT experts through e-mail with the enclosed
URL of the questionnaire. This resulted in 50.27% response rate with 92 usable
questionnaires in total which consist of 10 managers, 56 end users and 26 in-house
IT experts. Based on the proportion of the response rate of each role, 1 manager, 3
end users and 2 IT experts with 6 people in total were interviewed after the
questionnaire survey to in-depth understand the importance of the top 11 CSFs that
derived from the result of the questionnaire survey.
1.4 Structure of the Dissertation
The structure of the rest of the dissertation consists of the following chapters:
Chapter 2: A literature review discussing several accounts of relevant research,
including enterprise resources planning (ERP), ERP life cycle and critical success
factors for ERP systems with a summary at the end of the chapter, will be presented.
Chapter 3: The methodology of this research will be then set out, discussing the
research approach, design, quantitative and qualitative data collections and the
methods of analyses.
Chapter 4: The ontology of CSFs for ERP post-implementation with the discussion
for each of CSFs, which contains four main categories - organisational, system,
personnel and external resources factors, is provided.
Chapter 5: Quantitative data analysis and the results that consist of the general
findings, how the participants perceived the established ontology of CSFs for ERP
exploitation and the identification of the key factors, will be presented in this chapter.
Chapter 6: The results of the interviews that in-depth discussed about why the key
factors (top 11 CSFs derived from the results of the questionnaire survey) were
perceived as the most important to the success of the ERP post-implementation along
with a summary at the end of this chapter, are given.
7
Chapter 7: A further discussion that synthesised the findings of quantitative and
qualitative data along with the justification of the ontology will be seen in this
chapter.
Chapter 8: This dissertation will conclude with a discussion of the research findings
and implication, the limitation and the recommendations for the future research in
this area.
8
2. Literature Review
The literature review of any particular research acts a role that is to identify the
theories and prior research that have affected to the topic (Ridley, 2008). Thus, the
purpose of this literature review is to form the prior literature that related and
influenced to the topic of the present study. The research encompasses three major
themes. First, a review of enterprise resource planning is addressed to give an insight
to the topic area. The main foci of this are to demonstrate the following questions:
Why did it emerge? Why has it been widely adopted? How does it differ to other
information systems? Second, the stages of ERP life cycle is introduced in order to
present the different emphases in different period of time and to especially point out
the importance, situation and consequences of its omission of post-implementation
which is the phase that the present research concentrates on. Last, but not least,
current research in critical success factors for ERP will be discussed with a gap seen
across the review of the literature. The section will be concluded by summarising the
three major themes in this dissertation.
2.1 Enterprise Resource Planning
2.1.1 Background of ERP
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) has been well defined by several authors in ERP
research area (e.g. Kumar and Van Hillegersberg, 2000; Wallace and Kremzar, 2001;
Markus and Tanis, 2000; Davenport, 1998; Klaus et al., 2000; Rosemann,1999;
Gable, 1998) from somehow distinct perspectives (Hossain et al., 2002) but with no
significant differences (Al-Mashari et al., 2003), in which the one among these
considered relatively detailed is provided by Wallance and Krezar (2001: 5) who was
given the ERP definition as below:
An enterprise-wide set of management tools that balances demand and supply,
containing the ability to link customers and suppliers into a complete supply chain,
employing proven business processes for decision making and providing high degree
of cross-functional integration among sales, marketing, manufacturing, operations,
logistics, purchasing, finance, new products development and human resources
9
thereby enabling people to run their business with high level of customer service and
productivity, and simultaneously lower costs and inventories, and providing the
foundation for effective e-commerce.
It might commonly know that ERP was evolved from material requirements planning
(MRP) and manufacturing resource planning (MRP II) in order to meet the different
needs of the firms in the different period of time. Indeed, through the evolvement
from MRP to ERP, we might perceive the changes of enterprises needs as the result
of the increasing complexity of the business. MRP was initially designed to help
firms to deal with the materials efficiently; it then evolved into MRP II in order to
cope with more functionality, like sales planning, capacity management and
scheduling, in one solution in a firm. Despite the emergence of MRP II gave firms
some extend of integration view that made better and more efficient manufacturing
planning, it was not satisfied enough by enterprises to achieve the ultimate goals of
revenue and customer satisfaction (Klaus et al., 2000). Thus, it can be said that ERP
has evolved to encompass not only manufacturing aspect that already well developed
in MRP II but also all aspects within an enterprise including finance, sales and
logistics, human resources etc. to help today‟s enterprises to achieve the goals more
efficiently and effectively.
2.1.2 Motivations and Benefits of the ERP
The motivations of adopting an ERP system are mainly divided into two aspects –
technical problems and business problems (Consulting, 1998; Markus and Tanis,
2000). In terms of technical problems, it started with resolving the issue of Y2K.
After the issue, the problems faced by organisations at the time include the issue
derived from disparate systems, information quality and extremely complex business
process. Therefore, companies needed ERP technology as a solution to resolve the
issues and provide better way to run their increasing complex businesses. On the
other hand, ERP systems were desired to fix the fundamental business problems. As
the limitation of their own legacy systems to information, companies might find it
was difficult to know how was really happening to their business. Therefore, they
expected that ERP systems can present “one face to the customer” by better
10
understanding the real status of the business processes and then being able to
promise to the customers without any location restriction (Consulting, 1998).
There are a number of benefits that ERP promise to deliver and companies desire to
receive from it. Among the benefits mostly cited ones are cost reduction, operating
efficiency and higher performance management capability (Consulting, 1998;
Markus and Tanis, 2000; Kamhawi, 2008; Federici, 2009). However, it is believed
that there should be more benefits delivered by ERP systems A list of ERP benefits
provided by Shang and Seddon (2000) has proven this, and the benefits is classified
into five groups as shown below:
(1) Operational: cost reduction, cycle time reduction, productivity improvement,
quality improvement, and customer services improvement
(2) Managerial: better resource management, improved decision making and
planning, and performance improvement
(3) Strategic: supporting business growth, supporting business alliance, building
business innovations, building cost leadership, generating product
differentiation, and building external linkages.
(4) IT infrastructure: building business flexibility, IT cost reduction, and
increased IT infrastructure capability.
(5) Organisational relating: supporting organisational changes, facilitating
business learning, empowering, and building common version.
2.1.3 Characteristics of ERP systems
To have insight into an ERP system and how it differs from other IS, it is good to
look at its characteristics owned. The characteristics that found in the literature are
organised as below:
(1) ERP system is a integral combination of business process and IT
infrastructure (Slooten and Yap, 1999; Markus and Tanis, 2000). It was stated
that ERP can promise “seamless integration of all the information flowing
through a company-financial and accounting information, human resource
information, supply chain information, and customer information”
(Davenport, 1998: 121). However, it is also argued that adopters may not
11
receive the benefits derived from this feature when adopters decide to adopt
few or only one module or functional areas among all included modules as it
cannot benefit from the cross-function efficiency and effectiveness, only
configure financial module as the ERP system, for example (Markus and
Tanis, 2000). In terms of IT infrastructure, ERP systems requires to integrate
with a series of hardware, operating systems, database management systems
software, telecommunications, and also firm‟s own legacy systems that suited
to a particular firm in terms of size, structure and geographic distribution
(Markus and Tanis, 2000).
(2) ERP system is a standard commercial software package (Klaus et al., 2000;
Markus and Tanis, 2000). That is, the system is purchased from ERP systems
vendors rather than grew of nothing by in-house experts in organisations.
There are two implications for this characteristic pointed out by Markus and
Tanis (2000). First, the life cycle is different to other information systems.
This is because that adopters need to adjust their originally working processes
into the way that the package which was called business process re-
engineering (Hammer, 1990). And regarding the question of why not modify
the system rather than adjust the way the organisation worked, the answer is
the former involves many negative consequences (Markus and Tanis, 2000).
Another point makes it different to others is that ERP package involves the
configuration rather than programming. Configuration in ERP context is
about adapting the generic functionality possessed by a package to a
particular organisation needs (Markus and Tanis, 2000). Thus, the
implementation of an ERP system requires not only some of common IT
skills but also new skills and knowledge for the specific system. Second,
there is a long-term relationship between purchased organisations and the
vendor. Like other software vendors, ERP vendors are developing or
enhancing continuously for their packages, and purchased firms therefore
need to upgrade into the new version released in order to obtain the benefits.
Clearly, this is one of reasons that people suggest adopters not to modify the
packages instead the business processes to suit the package as vendor
generally do not guarantee and support for customer‟s modifications.
12
(3) ERP packages are designed as best practices to fit generic business processes
of multiple industries(Klaus et al., 2000; Markus and Tanis, 2000) and in
various countries. That is, what ERP aims to do is deliver the best practices of
business processes as whole even if it may a lot differ from the way any
particular organisation does the business. Therefore, the best practices is the
best reason that adopters should adopt it without or with minimum
modification and adjust their original business process to fit the package if
there is any instead.
(4) ERP systems are continuously and rapidly changing. There are some changes
pointed out by (Markus and Tanis, 2000). One significant change is the
architecture. ERP systems were designed for the mainframe system
architecture, and it has changed into client-server architectures, and some
even become web-enable version now. Another important change is about the
extensions. Theses extensions are developed by ERP vendors to extend their
core product to help firms to deal with “front office” such as sales
management, “supply chain” like advanced planning and scheduling, data
warehousing, and other functions. In addition to above, some enhancements
are also provided by vendors, customer relationships management and
electronic commerce, for example. Again, these changes promote the
collaboration relationship between implemented firms and their vendors for a
long-term.
2.2 ERP Life Cycle
2.2.1 Traditional Software Life Cycle V.S. ERP Life Cycle
It is stated that the life cycle of ERP packages is distinct from that of other traditional
software. Brehm and Markus (2000) are two of supporters to this statement. Firstly,
they believe that ERP life cycle is distinct from software life cycle (SLC) in several
ways, and the most significant one is the high involvement of a vendor during the
development activities, other software, on the other hand, merely requires the
consulting assistance from a vendor. Addition to this, one evident distinction was
also noted by the authors. The traditional SLC typically consists of the stages of
project definition, analysis, design, coding, test, implementation, and maintenance in
13
which some important stages that essential to ERP systems but are missing in the
traditional IS cycle, such as ongoing use and upgrades (Bingi et al., 1999; Kirchmer,
1999). Finally, one more that makes the life cycle of ERP differ from that of others,
is that more major iterations would be seen during the ERP life cycle compared with
other software systems (Brehm and Markus, 2000; Chang, 2004). Generally speaking,
implemented ERP systems involve a series necessary and repeatedly activities, such
as subsequent revision, re-implementations and upgrades (Chang, 2004), in order to
sustain the operation of the system. Consequently, the authors developed an
extension life cycle namely divided software life cycle (DSLC) instead of SLC, to fit
the difference in three perspectives mentioned between the life cycle of traditional
software and that of ERP.
2.2.2 The ERP Journey
Although prior ERP related topics have put emphases on how to successfully achieve
the point of an implementation, but the point is thought not the end of ERP life cycle.
Consulting (1998) argued that ERP transformation journey consists of two waves,
namely “First Wave” and “Second Wave” in which 49 percent of respondents of the
interviews who were from 62 companies at Fortune 500 companies, admitted that
“going live” is not the end of their ERP journey but only the end of the beginning. In
other words, the point of going live is just the end of first wave, as well as the start of
the second wave. Furthermore, every ERP adopter or investor, of course, desires to
reap the full benefits or returns from their investment. Nevertheless, the practical
experiences of adopted companies from the study mentioned, can tell us a fact that
the benefits, those they anticipated to gain and the capabilities of ERP systems can
delivery, can be only partly received when they just reach the point of „going live‟ of
in ERP journey (Consulting, 1998). Hence, the adopters or investors should not stop
when reach going-live point but carry on the journey according to the information
above.
2.2.3 The Stages of ERP Journey
Some ERP academics have classified a number of distinct stages in which ERP
journey was more precisely presented on what happens to each of period of time.
Cooper and Zmud (199) proposed a six-stage model as the result of a synthesis of
14
other models found in prior studies, the six stages are initiation, adoption, adaptation,
acceptance, routinisation and infusion. The model starts with initiation stage in
which organisation problems or opportunities, and possible ICT solutions are
considered and defined and a best match solution to the organisation is decided as the
achievement of the stage. Following initiation stage, the negotiations is made in
order to ensure that the pre-defined solution in the last stage is or not worth to be
taken by the organisation, and by the end of this stage, a decision regarding to
implementing or not is reached as the result of the negotiations. This is followed by
adaptation stage which a complete system is delivered as the product of the stage. In
order to achieve this, selected ICT application is developed, deployed, and
maintained in operational environment in the organisation, the revisions
organisational procedures are done, and the educations both in new procedures and
the manipulation of the new system are processed. When the complete system goes
live, the commitments of the users to the installed system are induced, and the users
start using the system to work on their jobs during the acceptance stage. Once
routinisation stage is reached, the usage of the system becomes an ordinary activity
in the adopted organisation. Finally, the benefits including improved organizational
effectiveness, better support for higher levels of activities taken among the
organisation are gained through the usage of the system. And in this stage, the
maximum capability of the system is fully used within the organisation.
Ross and Vitale (2000) suggested five stages emerged in the ERP journey; the five
stages include design, implementation, stabilisation, continuous improvement and
transformation. In the first stage of Ross and Vitale‟s model, the firm mostly focus
on the consideration between organisational process and ERP packages. Two crucial
decisions are made in the first stage. The first one is the decision on the process
change of the organisation. That is, the firm needs to consider whether or not to
change their current process into the process defined in the ERP packages, to some
extent, the selection of ERP packages is a key decision made in this stage. The
second one is about the determination of the process standardisation. The reason why
it is important in this early stage is because it is just like the concrete which is
unlikely or impossible to be changed after it has build. After design stage, the
activities including configuration, installation and user training are undertaken during
15
the implementation stage and the goal of this stage is to reach the going-live
milestone. When the system has just gone live, the firm faces the stabilisation phase
where the problems need to be fixed, users adjust themselves in terms of data and
business processes in order to fit in the new environment that derived from the new
implemented system, and also the firm‟s performance would generally dip during the
period of this stage. Ross and Vitale noted that some of firms fortunately tided over
this unpleased phase for few months while others found it were a long-term war
which might took years to overcome the bad situation. Meanwhile, at the good side,
most invested firms start receiving some benefits and seeing significant improvement
due to the better understanding of their processes and products as the result of the
holistic view provided by the new system. Following stabilisation, firms enter to
continuous improvement phase in which the new functions are expended through
new modules or add-ons; Also, the ERP systems in this stage can start generating
significant operating benefits that the adopted firms desire to see. Finally, the ERP
journey is end with transformation phase in which none of firms participated Ross
and Vitale‟s research felt they had reached the phase but they were looking forward
to it.
Markus and Tanis (2000) also proposed an ERP implementation process model with
the four phases of chartering, project, shakedown, and onward and upward. The first
phase of Markus and Tanis‟s involves developing a business case for the to-be
system, selecting an ERP package, determining a project manager and also
approving the budget and schedule for the project; a number of people are playing
important roles during the period of the stage, they are system vendors, consultants,
firms‟ executives and IT experts. It is followed by the project phase in which firms
make effort on the activities intended to deliver a complete system that can really run
in one or more organisational units. Major activities of the stage are system
configuration, integration, testing, data conversion, users‟ education and system
rollout; and key roles of the stage include the project manager, project team members
who are on behalf of different functional areas in a firm, in-house IT experts, vendors,
and consultant. The third stage of the model is so-called shakedown. Firms‟
productivities dip during the stage, and they put the efforts on achieving normal
operations. Finally, invested firms can obtain the return from such investment in the
16
onward and upward phase. The main activities of the stage include continuous
improvement, more user skill education and post-implementation benefit assessment,
and key roles involved are operational managers, end users, and IT support personnel
along with vendors and consultants when upgrades are undertaken.
2.2.4 A Proposed ERP Journey and Definition of Post-implementation
A four-stage model of ERP journey was established in the present research study as a
result of a synthesis of the three models discussed. The stages of ERP journey are
shown as below:
(1) Inception: refers to the period of time prior to the start of the
implementation project
Key activities: identifying organisation problems and opportunities,
building business case for investment, evaluating whether invest or
not, selecting an ERP package, considering and determining the
extent of the business process change, forming project team,
determining the budget and schedule
Key actors: top management, IT experts (in-house or/and external),
ERP system vendor, consultants
(2) Implementation: refers to the period of time from the end of inception to
the system going live.
Key activities: system development, configuration, deployment,
integration, testing, data conversion, user training
Key actors: project manager, project team members (from various
functional areas), top management, general management, IT experts
(in-house or/and external), ERP system vendor, consultants
(3) Stabilisation: refers to period of time from going live until routine use
Key activities: fixing bugs, resolving problems, turning system
performance, accommodating business process changes, continuous
user training and education, initially using new system, maintaining
system
Key actors: operational management, users, IT experts, project team
members (or cross-functional team members), vendor, consultants
17
(4) Continuous improvement and extension: refers to ongoing maintenance
and enhancement of the using system and function extension for ongoing
business requirements
Key activities: continuous system review, business improvement,
technology upgrades, module or function extensions, routinely using
system, maintaining system, user support
Key actors: operational management, users, IT experts, top
management, vendor, consultant
After identifying the stages of ERP journey, it can be clearly defined here that the
post-implementation in this dissertation presents the third and fourth stages, namely
stabilisation and continuous improvement and extension. Therefore, the two stages
and their associated activities and actors will be utilised to form the scope of the
post-implementation in the remaining of the dissertation.
2.3 Critical Success Factors for ERP Systems
2.3.1 Definition of Critical success factors
Rockart (1979: 85) defined critical success factors (CSFs) as “the limited number of
areas in which results, if they are satisfactory, will ensure successful competitive
performance for the organisation. They are the few key areas where „things must go
right‟ for the business to flourish. If results in these areas are not adequate, the
organisation‟s efforts for the period will be less than desired”. In fact, the author is
the person who created the concept of CSFs, with the intention of supporting
managers to recognise the key information needed from top management‟s view
(Soliman et al., 2001; Laosethakul et al., 2006). And it can be seen that this
definition has been generally agreed by researchers who directly cited it (e.g.
Soliman et al., 2001; Laosethakul et al., 2006) or define on their own word with very
similar or indifferent meaning (e.g. Bendell et al., 1993). Boynton and Zmud
(1984)‟s definition however has part of different view point from Rockart‟s. Rockart
believes that CSFs are developed to ensure successful competitive performance for
the organisation while Boynton and Zmud argue that those factors are developed to
increase the management attention in order to ensure organisation‟s current operating
18
activities and to its future success, the latter is considered more relevant than the
former to be applied to the context of this study.
2.3.2 Current Literature on CSFs for ERP system
A variety of factors that can contribute a successful ERP system implementation
have identified and discussed by numerous authors. One repeatedly cited of these is
suggested by Umble et al., (2003), the 9 factors defined include clear understanding
of strategic goals, commitment by top management, excellent project management,
organisational change management, a great implementation team, data accuracy,
extensive education and training, focused performance measures and multi-site
issues. In addition to those factors, some factors with different angle of view are also
considered as important factors in ERP systems implementation, such as effective
communication (Nah et al., 2001) and change management culture issues (Nah et al.,
2001, Shanks et al., 2000), with total 11 factors in both studies. The communication
factor has been seen a vital one in this context, as a result, the Nah et al., (2001)‟s
CSFs has been widely utilised as the framework to work on further researches by
several researchers (e.g. Fui-Hoon Nah et al., 2003; Gargeya and Brady, 2005; Ngai
et al., 2008). In Fui-Hoon Nah et al., (2003)‟s study, the Nah et al.‟ 11 factors were
identified, with underlying sub factors for each of the factors raising from expanded
literature review, as critical for the success of ERP implementation, and those factors
were used to evaluate on which factors are most important to chief information
officers (CIOs) in the research, the results shows the top 5 critical factors recognised
by the CIOs were top management support, project champion, ERP teamwork and
composition, project management, and change management program and culture.
Another research (Gargeya and Brady, 2005) that focused on one specific ERP
systems vendor - SAP, were based on the 11 success factors defined by Nah et al.
and the 14 factors (definition of business goals, establishment an executive
management planning committee, thinking of implementation as research and
development, use of cross-functional teams, stocking implementation teams with the
best and smartest workers, alignment of everyone‟s interest by giving mid-level
management hands-on responsibility, constant communication with teams and end
users, excellent project management, choice of partners, extensive education and
19
training, management with data, measurement of the right things, establishment of
aggressive achievable schedules, and no fear for change) defined by Umble and
Umble (2001), and the all success factors collected from the two studies were then
classified into 6 logical groupings by the authors, namely adequate testing, dealt with
organisational diversity, project team, management support and consultants, internal
readiness and training, planning development and budgeting and worked with SAP
functionality and maintained scope. Similarly, the CSFs defined by Nah et al.‟s were
used by Ngai et al., (2008) as a ground, with a review within comprehensive
resources including journals, conference proceedings, doctoral dissertation and
textbooks from 10 different countries, and as a result 7 new factors that were not
listed in the Nah et al.‟s study, were identified and discussed as new CSFs in the
research.
In addition to Nah et al.‟s CSFs, the other popular CSFs among researchers of this
topic was provided by Somers and Nelson (2001), which covers comprehensive
factors that can critically contribute the success of ERP implementation across its
stages, with 22 factors in total. There are two significant differences between the
study and others discussed above. Firstly, it takes external resources (vendor and
consultants) into account in the proposed CSFs. Because of the complexity of the
ERP implementation, there is generally a need of supports and advices from those
experienced experts in order to achieve such hard work successfully. Secondly, the
concept of life cycle of the factors was introduced in the research. Five stages of IT
implementation (initiation, adoption, adaptation, acceptance, routinisation and
infusion) were defined by the authors – to attempt to figure out which factors are that
important to each of the stages separately instead of important to the implementation
as a whole – which will be discussed in detail in the following section.
The study, not surprisingly, proved that the factors that are important to the different
stages defined vary. It is evident to note a fact that some factors are only significant
to one specific a period of time but not to others of the implementation processes at
all as the nature, architecture choices and clear goals and objectives factors were
pointed out the most two important factor for initiation stage in the survey as they are
obviously addressed in every early of the implementation projects, thus they present
20
not significant for the later four stages, for example. Some factors, however, were
identified critical important throughout the majority of the stages, like top
management support and communication and cooperation.
Indeed, the CSFs developed by Somers and Nelson (2001) were deemed a good
candidate list to be based on to undertake for their works by several researchers
because of its comprehensive and meaningful features provided. Akkermans and Van
Helden (2002) were based on the list of CSFs to investigate the interrelationships
between the factors and the result demonstrated that all the factors were interrelated
directly or indirectly to each other and all in the same direction (all positive or
positive), while Plant and Willcocks (2007) were based on the same list to examine
the perceptions of project managers of CSFs, who are believed affect the outcome of
ERP implementation throughout the stages of the implementation.
In addition to the studies discussed, it is obvious a nature that part of the studies
started trying to synthesise the factors among the factors developed by distinct
researchers to conduct their researches in different perspectives due to there were
many good and somewhat different lists available at the point of their study (e.g.
Shanks et al., 2000; Nah and Delgado, 2006; Sarker and Lee, 2003; Finney and
Corbett, 2007). There are some different perspectives in ERP CSFs studies. Social
enablers such as strong and committed leadership, open and honest communication,
and a balanced and empowered implementation team were argued as the essential
prerequisites to the ultimate success for ERP implementation. On the other hand,
organisational fit and certain implementation contingencies were examined to
demonstrate the significant determination of ERP implementation success (Hong and
Kim, 2002).
2.3.3 A Gap in CSFs of ERP Post-implementation
Up to present, it is clear to note a fact that almost all studies discussed above centred
on the success of ERP implementation stage. Although Somers and Nelson
introduced the concept of the life cycle of the ERP system of CSFs, it cannot be seen
that there was adequate consideration for post-implementation stage. The reasons for
this are two. Firstly, more specific factors that potentially contribute the success for
ERP post-implementation cannot be seen among the CSFs provided, like the factors
21
related to the usage, maintain and support of the system. Secondly, not many
discussion of post-implementation can be seen in the arguments of each of CSFs,
pre-implementation and implementation stages were the foci instead. Thus, it can be
concluded a fact that there is none of complete research on CSFs of ERP post-
implementation among the literature reviewed.
Furthermore, despite the fact that few researches (e.g. Somers and Nelson, 2001;
Law et al., 2009) on CSFs associated with not only implementation stage but some
activities related to post-implementation stage have been undertaken by researchers
in the area, CSFs with fullness and concentration on post-implementation is still
none to date. One of these discussed CSFs for ERP implementation together with its
upgrade which is one of the activities undertaken during the phase of post-
implementation stage (Nah and Delgado, 2006). In the study, the CSFs for ERP
implementation and those for its upgrade were compared and a very similar result of
the comparison was concluded. On the other hand, the consideration of maintenance
and support caught Law et al. (2009)‟s attentions as those elements deemed as vital
throughout the life cycle of the system, which are, of course, very important to post-
implementation stage. Law et al.(2009) contributed 8 CSFs (implementation strategy,
organisation and infrastructure, client-vendor alignments and co-operation, support
and participation, ability to leverage ERP expertise from multiple sources,
communication and co-ordination, maintenance and support strategy and focuses,
quality of ERP implementation) for ERP maintenance and support by comparing the
experiences of two consecutive ERP projects chosen as the case studies in the study,
which would be expected that will benefit to the following research related to the
topic of CSFs for ERP post-implementation including this research. However, some
elements of post-implementation stage are missing in both studies discussed. That is,
such as the usage of the system and continuous improvement are apparently crucial
for implemented ERP systems, thus they should be placed importance on as others.
In sum, although the topic CSFs for ERP systems has been widely undertaken by
researchers, those of ERP post-implementation have been noted important but are
still under-researched (Ngai et al., 2008). The topic of CSFs for ERP post-
implementation is, therefore, worthwhile and strongly to be conducted in the area.
22
Hence, the emergence of this research can represent as supporter with intention of
bridge the gap seen to date in this specific and important topic.
2.4 Summary
EPP was initially derived from MRP and MRP II, which encompass not only
materials and manufacturing aspect that already well developed in MRP and MRP II
respectively but also all aspects across an business process including finance, sales
and logistics, human resources etc. to help today‟s enterprises to achieve the goals
more efficiently and effectively within extremely complex business environment. A
number of motivations and benefits of ERP gives the reasons why a large amount of
firms have largely invested such technology. The adopters were mainly motivated by
two aspects – technical and business reasons; also, a wide range of returns can be
received by ERP investors which involves operational, managerial, strategic, IT
infrastructure, organisational relating benefits. A several characteristics of ERP
demonstrate that how does it differ from other IS and why it should be addressed
separately. And one important point to the current study is that it leads a fact
regarding the life cycle different from traditional IS life cycle.
This is claimed by several authors that ERP life cycle is distinct to traditional IS life
cycle in many ways. In addition to his, Consulting (1998) argued that “going live” is
not the end of the ERP journey but the beginning of the “Second Wave” or post-
implementation, therefore firms need to keep going the journey when the system
goes live as the lack of the awareness to post-implementation phase leads to a result
that full benefits cannot be received. Thanks to the difference between ERP life cycle
and IS life cycle, and the importance of post-implementation have been noted, some
authors developed ERP life cycle model to meet the needs. Through a synthesis of
the models, a-four stages model was proposed, the four stages are inception,
implementation, stabilisation, and continuous improvement and enhancement; and
the third and fourth stages along with their associated activities and key players were
defined as the framework of the post-implementation in the present dissertation.
Critical success factors (CSFs) are defined as “….They are the few key areas where
„things must go right‟ for the business to flourish” Rockart (1979: 85). The
23
discussion of CSFs for ERP systems is a hot topic in ERP research area, and a wide
range of CSFs has been found throughout the review of ERP related publications.
However, it is clear a fact that although the CSFs for ERP post-implementation have
been recognised important but seen a gap in existing literature.
24
3. Methodology
This chapter intends to present the frame of this research from the identification of
the need of this research to how the researcher designed a set of appropriate research
methods to answer the all questions derived from the gap found in the existing
literature.
3.1 Research Approach
Johnson and Duberley (2000) argued that how researchers come to enquire about
specific research questions, how they conduct their research in order to answer the
questions, and how the research result is justified, are all subject to some
presuppositions in the light of various underlying epistemological commitments.
The study consists of deductive and inductive approaches. Due to there was no
theoretical framework of CSFs of ERP post-implementation within the existing
literature, the present study firstly identified the factors that can critically influence
the success of post-implementation ERP systems; the scope of the review will be
specifically discussed in the research design section. Consequently, a theory would
be built at this point and the first question should therefore be answered at this point.
In order to test the established theory, a mixture of quantitative and qualitative was
introduced. Once the factors have been identified, the researcher could further
undertake the case study to obtain the practical perspective on those factors to
examine them and further understand the reasons behind them, which is the second
and the last question that this study intended to answer. These lead to the design of
the present research as follows.
3.2 Research Design
The framework of the present study is presented diagrammatically at Figure1 which
consists of three main stages with each outcome. With the nature of the phenomena
in the present research, multiple methods were chosen to address all the questions
and objectives of the research. Each of stages will be discussed in the following
paragraphs.
25
Figure 1: The framework of the research
3.2.1 Stage 1: Research Orientation
Before appropriate methods can be chosen for this research, the questions have to be
defined first. Therefore, the first thing of the present research was to identify the gap
in the existing literature. Through the review of ERP literature, the gap has been
found and the research questions and objectives were subsequently identified.
3.2.2 Stage 2: Literature Review for identifying potential CSFs
After identifying the research questions and objectives, the literature was first of all
reviewed in order to identify empirically a set of critical factors associated with post-
implementation or exploitation ERP success. Owing to the lack of ERP CSFs for the
specific stage found in the current literature, this review therefore not only
concentrated on the current literature related to CSFs for ERP systems but also
broadened the scope in order to explore as many factors as possible from the
literature that somehow related to the present research topic. Therefore, the scope of
the review was be firstly defined, followed by the collection of the literature within
26
the defined scope. The collected literature was then reviewed, and the ontology of
CSFs for post-implementation as a result of the review was finally developed, which
was used as the framework of the next stage – case study.
3.2.3 Stage 3: Case Study
Once the ontology of CSFs for post-implementation was developed at the second
stage, a case study was subsequently conducted to examine the developed ontology
derived from the extensive literature review in the first stage. Why is a case study
considered as appropriate for this study, given the research questions and purpose,
and the nature of the phenomena to be studied? Essentially, the present study is to
identify and justify the CSFs for ERP in post-adoption stage which has been
indicated an under-researched topic to date. A case study is particularly suitable for
research aiming at probing the deeper meaning of already researched and the
emerging areas that haven‟t been fully discovered (Hartley, 2004). In addition, it is
suggested by Yin (2008) that majority research efforts need multiple cases, but
a single-case study is appropriate when it is an extreme or unique, or it represents a
critical case for testing well-formulated theory. This is where single-case study
research design lends its support to the present study.
3.2.3.1 About the Single Case
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Inc. (ASE Inc.) - the world‟s largest provider
of independent semiconductor manufacturing services in assembly and test. The
background, the complexity of the business processes, the high competition position
faced and more importantly the experiences of ERP implementation, usage and
enhancement are the determinants that it was chosen to be the case company in this
research. SAP, one of ERP vendors, was chosen as the ERP system provider and
implemented initially in 2004, followed by an enhancement project in 2007 in -
Kaohsiung, Taiwan - the headquarters of ASE Inc. Moreover, the successful ERP
experience is continually rolling out to their other sites located worldwide; in 2008,
the firm has successfully rolled the experience to a branch company located in
Shanghai, China, for example.
27
3.2.3.2 The Access of the Data within the Case Company
When the target case has been determined, the researcher started contacting the
company by e-mail with a brief explanation of the research purpose. Due to the scale
of company is large; the mail has been passed through until the main contact of this
research received it. A phone meeting has been subsequently arranged where the
researcher explained to the main contact the research purpose, the procedures of the
questionnaire and interview, the ethics issues, and the timescale in detail. After the
research has been understood, the contact agreed to participant to this research and to
be the main contact of this research and the person in charge of dealing with the all
sectors within the company who are relevant to this study when conduct the
questionnaire and interview.
3.3 Development of Ontology of CSFs of ERP Post-implementation
With the lack of the current literature in this topic, this stage intended to review
extensively both the direct- and indirect-related literature to identify the potential
factors for the ERP exploitation success. In order to form the literature scope, the
relevant topics and keywords were defined before searching and collecting among
the literature databases and libraries that available for the researcher. The scope and
relevant searching terms defined were shown as followed:
(1) ERP critical success factors: this refers ERP success in general.
Key words: “ERP/ enterprise resource planning/ Enterprise systems” and
“success /succeed/ successful” or “critical success factor/ CSF/ critical issues/
factors/ drivers”
(2) ERP failure factors, risks and barriers: this refers ERP context and somehow
implicate the success.
Key words: “ERP/ enterprise resource planning/ Enterprise systems” and
“failure factors/risks/barriers”
(3) MRP II/CRM/Information system success factors: this refers to other
information systems with some similar characteristics with ERP system.
Key words: “MRP II/ CRM/ Information system/ IS” and “success/ succeed/
successful” or “critical success factor/ CSF/ critical issues/ factors/ drivers”
28
(4) Post-implementation stage: this refers to the stage that this study target for.
Key words: “Post-implementation/post-adoption/exploitation/second wave/go
live” or activities undertaken during the stage “use/ maintenance/ upgrade/
update/ enhancement/ improvement/ stabilisation/ extension”
Once the scope and search terms of the literature have been specifically defined, all
the literature as a results of the search of the key words (1), (1) + (4), (2) + (4) or (3)
+ (4) within relevant and accessible databases including Emerald, LISA, Wok and
Google Scholar and university libraries, were collected. Each of them was then
carefully reviewed based on the knowledge built from the literature and practical
experience in IT area in order to extract and assess on what factors match to the
target stage of this research. After the review, a set of relevant factors were identified
as the potential CSFs for ERP post-implementation, which were subsequently
analysed and classified in consequence the ontology was developed as the outcome
at the end of the stage.
3.4 Questionnaire Component
Since this research is essentially to explore the CSFs for post-implementation ERP
from a comprehensive rather than one particular view, that is, not only few people
participated to the present study. Thus, in order to collect the large amount of data in
a limited time among the relevant parties in the case company, questionnaire was
considered the most appropriate data collection method to the present study.
3.4.1 Questionnaire Design
The questionnaire was designed based on the developed ontology. The all factors of
the ontology were extracted directly into the questionnaire, each of the factors was
followed by a five-point Likert scale including extremely important, important,
moderate important, slightly important and not important at all for success. Apart
from the 28 CSFs, a number of questions related to the ERP system background of
the respondent were added at the end of the questionnaire for the later use of this
study. The questions are listed as followed:
(1) What is your role?
29
IT system maintenance staff/ System user/ Departmental manager
(2) Have you participated in the previous ERP implementation project?
Yes, all/ Yes, partly/ No
(3) How long have you used or maintained the ERP system in the
organisation?
Never/ Less than 3 months/ Between 3 and 12 months/ Between 1 and 2
years/ Over 2 years
When all the questions were defined, the descriptions of the research topic, research
purpose, the collection duration of the questionnaire, and ethics issues were provided
in the forefront of the questionnaire. The complete questionnaire was then carefully
translated from English into Chinese since the later is the native language of the case
company, and it was told that the majority of the respondents mainly use Chinese
rather than English in the company.
3.4.2 Participants of Questionnaire Survey
The study targeted three groups of the people as the respondents in this study, who
were considered the main parties that influence the success of ERP systems within
organisations. The groups are as follows:
Operational managers: this group of people is considered involving
the interdepartmental communication and coordination, in charge of
the communications between the higher-level management and the
system users within the responsible sectors, as well as utilise the
information of the ERP system to conduct the related business.
System users: involve using the implemented system to conduct the
daily works and raising new requirements.
IT specialists: involve the maintenance, analysis, development and
consultation of the ERP system.
Because of the arguments above, the three groups of people were perceived as the
appropriate participants to this study.
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3.4.3 Data Collection by Questionnaire
3.4.3.1 Pilot Test
Before the questionnaire has been sent to the respondents, the researcher asked for
the main contact help to examine the translation or wording issues, and test whether
the online questionnaire was accessed and displayed properly within the company
network. According to the feedback of the contact, the researcher modified the term
“ERP system” into “SAP system” because the latter was generally called in the firm
rather than the former.
3.4.3.2 Questionnaire Administration
The online questionnaire, SurveyMonkey, was selected as data collection means for
the questionnaire survey in the present study. When the online questionnaire was
ready, the URL of the questionnaire was firstly sent to the main contact of the firm
for this study by the researcher university‟s e-mail, the mail was then forwarded to
the all participants through the main contact. The questionnaire survey was
conducted between July and Aug in 2010 for three weeks and three reminder points
were set out during the period of the collection in order to reinforce the response rate.
After the period of data collection, the collection status of the online questionnaire
was turned to be closed (to forbid the access of the questionnaire after the collection
period) with a message to acknowledge their time and valuable input to the survey.
The distribution of 183 questionnaires through the contact, resulted in a total
response of 92 usable questionnaires, it presents a 50.27 percent response rate. The
mailed 183 surveys consist of 16 managers, 135 users and 32 IT experts among the
case company, with the responses of 10, 56 and 26 usable questionnaires respectively.
31
Figure 2: The distribution of questionnaire sending and receiving
3.4.4 Quantitative Data Analysis
For the convenience of the data analysis, the numeric value for the degree of the
importance of each of the factors has been pre-defined in the design of the
questionnaire. The pre-defined value for each of degrees of the importance is as
below:
5 = Extremely important for success
4 = Important for success
3 = Moderate important for success
2 = Slightly important for success
1 = Not important at all for success
The mean – is “by far the most commonly used measure of central tendency” (Levin
et al., 1994: 85) - was adopted along with the standard deviation as it is defined as
“represents the „average‟ variability in a distribution, because it measures the average
of deviations from the mean” (Levin et al., 1994: 118), to analyse the data collected
from the questionnaire survey to see the overall result of each factor. In fact, the
mean along with standard deviation has been utilised in a number of the studies in
information system related topics, Somers and Nelson (2001) is good example for
this. Furthermore, frequency distribution was used to present which degree of the
0 50 100 150 200
Operational manager
End user
IT Expert
ALL
Operational
managerEnd user IT Expert ALL
Sent 16 135 32 183
Received 10 56 26 92
32
importance of each CSF was perceived by the respondents. The means, standard
deviations and frequency distributions of the 28 CSFs were calculated by SPSS
Statistics 17.
3.5 Interview Component
The interview designed in this research is to in-depth understand why the key factors
were regarded as the CSFs of the ERP exploitation.
3.5.1 Interview Design
The top 11 key factors derived from the result of the questionnaire (how to define the
key factors will be discussed in the data analysis chapter) were extracted as the
fundamental of the questions; each of the factors was transferred into one single
question and discussed in-depth through the interviews, as a result, in total 11
questions were covered in the interview. In order to reinforce the communication
between the main contact and the potential interviewees, the researcher developed an
interview guide to aid the process of the interview, which consists of the purpose,
procedure of the research, the 11 factors, and the usage of the interview content.
3.5.2 Participants of Interview
Based on the proportions of the respondents of each role, the researcher determined
the needed interviewee in terms of the roles and the proportion of each role. The
researcher firstly identified an appropriate amount of end-users as the standard for
the other roles. As a result, a composition of 1 operational manager, 2 IT specialist
and 3 system users, who were also participated in the questionnaire survey, was
determined as presented at Table 1.
Table 1: The interview participants
Role Response Percent Amount
System user 60.87% 3
IT specialist 28.26% 2
Operational manager 10.87% 1
33
Total 100.00% 6
3.5.3 Data Collection by Interview
3.5.3.1 Before Interview
The interview guide mentioned earlier was sent to the main contact in order to ask
help for the arrangements of the interviews. Through the main contact, the
participants have been determined and provided the interview guide. The researcher
was provided the e-mail addresses of the all participants, and each of them was then
contacted for scheduling and setting the interview by the researcher‟s university e-
mail. Before the day of the interview, the interviewee was reminded by the
researcher.
3.5.3.2 The Interview
At the beginning of each interview, the interviewee was explained the topic, purpose
of the research, the procedures of the interview the ethic issues regarding the use of
the recording and the usage of the collected data, which were stated in the interview
guide that has been sent to each of interviewees by the contact of the firm earlier.
Each of participants was also told that the name would be anonymous and the
content of the interview could be quoted in this study with the role title such as
manager, IT expert or end user. After these, the interview started and be recorded.
The interviewees were asked “Why do you think that No.X factor was perceived as
the important CSF to the success of ERP post-implementation?” and “Do you have
any examples for that?” for each of the key factors. Chinese language was used in the
entire of the interviews.
3.5.3.3 After Interview
After each of the interview, the participant was sent a letter to acknowledge the time
and valuable input to this study. And the contact was phoned to especially appreciate
for the input for the study after all the interviews. The conversations between the
interviewer and interviewee in the recording were then transcribed into text.
34
3.5.3.4 Interview Administration
The all interviews were conducted through Skype to Skype or to landline because of
the translational distance between the interviewees and the researcher, and were
recorded by iFree Skype Recorder. When the entire research was finished, the record
files along with the transcriptions were at the same time deleted from the
researcher‟s laptop. The all interviews were conducted within one week and finished
in Aug 2010.
3.5.4 Qualitative Data Analysis
A thematic analysis approach was chosen for the analysis of the qualitative data in
the present study, because of its predominant in analysing qualitative data (Christofi
et al.), and the appropriateness to this study. Despite it is defined a data-driven
inductive approach, it can be mixed with a deductive approach with a set of pre-
defined codes (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane, 2008), where the approach leads its
suitability to this study, and the details will be interpreted in the following
descriptions.
The analysis was divided into three steps in this study, which was originally
borrowed from Braun and Clarke (2006)‟s the-six-phases thematic analysis and
modified for the use of the study. The brief description of each step in the analysis is
presented as follows.
Step 1: Getting familiar with the data
Prior to actually entering the analysis of the data, it is foremost that “you immerse
yourself in the data to the extent that you are familiar with the depth and breadth of
the content Braun and Clarke (2006: 87). It often needs to read through the data over
and over again to scan for the meaning, patterns and etc within and behind it (Braun
and Clarke, 2006). In order to do so, the researcher repeatedly read through the
transcriptions to gain in-depth understanding, and briefly noted down the interesting
ideas such as examples found during the readings into a table in Microsoft Word file.
Step 2: Organising the raw data into the coding scheme
35
When the full understanding of the data was gained and ideas were identified, the
thematic analysis entered to step two in this study. In Braun and Clarke (2006)‟s
analysis, this stage involves forming the codes, and then arranging and fitting the
collected raw data into the codes; where the present study formed the codes by
extracting directly the categories of the factors that have been pre-produced in the
ontology (which will be seen in the next chapter), and then organised the all textual
data into the coding scheme.
Step 3: Presenting the results
The final stage of the thematic analysis is about presenting “the complicated story of
your data in a way which convinces the reader of the merit and validity of your
analysis”. While doing this, it is vital that the sufficient evidence must be provided
by extracting quotes from the data (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Therefore, the
researcher was not only forming the presentation of the content but also identifying
the quotes that could support the arguments in this study.
Finally, it should be noted here that all the interviews were conducted and the
analysed in Chinese because of the reason mentioned earlier, except the final quotes
for the presentations of this research were carefully translated into English, with an
intention to minimise the potential issues raised from the translation.
3.6 Summary
By way of conclusion, the study consists of three stages. The research questions had
firstly identified through a gap found in the existing literature in the first stage. In
order to answer the questions, a mixture method was chosen. Firstly, an extensive
literature was reviewed in order to identify potential CSFs of ERP post-
implementation which is the second stage of the study. The established theory then
used to conduct a single-case study in order to examine the theory, prioritise the
CSFs as well as to in-depth understand the importance of the most important CSFs
which is the stage three of the present study. The theory, ontology of CSFs for ERP
post-implementation, is presented in the following chapter.
36
4. Ontology of CSFs of ERP Post-implementation
With pre-identified scope, the literature was searched and collected within the
relevant databases and university libraries, and reviewed to identify the potential
CSFs for ERP post-implementation. As a result, 28 factors in total were found
relevant to the focus of the present research. The researcher subsequently developed
the ontology of CSFs for ERP exploitation by analysing the 28 factors to find out the
features, and organising them into four meaningful categories namely organisation,
system, personnel and external resource. Each of factors will be discussed with the
relevant references in order of the categories in the following sections.
4.1 Organisation Factors
Continuous support by top and senior management
Top management support has been frequently seen as one of the critical success
factors of ERP adoption in publications of ERP study area (Davenport, 1998; Bingi
et al., 1999; Somers and Nelson, 2001; Somers and Nelson, 2004). In fact, this factor
is also identified that continuously influence the overall success of software
including ERP system after adoption period (Ifinedo, 2006). Indeed, the
implemented ERP systems may normally need to be upgraded or extended the
functionality to have more powerful managerial and technical capabilities to generate
sustained benefits (Ross and Vitale, 2000) which these imperative activities cannot
be carried out without the approval for the projects (Bingi et al., 1999; Buckhout et
al., 1999; Sumner, 1999; Ifinedo, 2008) and the priority and allocation of necessary
resources allocated (Holland et al., 1999; Ross and Vitale, 2000; Shanks et al., 2000;
Somers and Nelson, 2001; Ifinedo, 2008) from top or/and senior management.
Management can also impact staff‟s attitude and behaviour toward the ERP system
which can resolve the resistance for the changes from users (Yu, 2005) especially
during the stabilisation stage of EPR life cycle, execute BPR fully and firmly
(Willcocks and Sykes, 2000; Yu, 2005), encourage the effective use, planning,
review and improvement (Peng and Nunes, 2009a), and mediate and resolve the
conflicts between various interest groups in an organisation (Davenport, 1998; Al-
37
Mashari et al., 2003). For the above reasons, top and senior management support is
critical to ERP success in post-implementation stage.
Sufficient consultation and communication with IT specialist and user before the
decision is made by top management
Top managers are typically insufficient in the knowledge both information
technology and operational areas to make the important decisions on IT solutions
(Peng and Nunes, 2009b). Without IT specialists and experienced user consultations,
they are likely to make decisions that lead to the adopted ERP system toward an
inappropriate or unsuccessful development in terms of both technical and business
aspects as any decision made during exploitation stage may cause technical and
business changes. To ensure the success of the continuous development in adopted
ERP system, sufficient communication with IT specialists and veteran users when
top managers make decisions is vital.
Clear future system enhancement plan
A business case is crucial for both the adoption and upgrade of ERP system in which
the benefits, resources, costs, risks and schedule should be specified (Nah and
Delgado, 2006) because the lack of the plan can result insufficient funding (Peng and
Nunes, 2009a) and time and human resources, as a consequence of not well prepared,
for the essential maintenance and enhancement. Therefore the improvement and
problem-resolving purpose cannot be achieved which may limit the capability of and
cause a potential problems to run the business in the current-using system. With
regarding the impact, this factor is considered to be critically influenced the success
of the implemented ERP system.
Efficient management on ERP system related project
Project management is another that has been largely regarded critical success factor
in the ERP implementation by ERP researchers (Holland et al., 1999; Rosario, 2000;
Shanks et al., 2000; Somers and Nelson, 2001). Why this factor is particularly
emphasised the importance by the researchers, one of the reasons is because the great
number of people from various departments and different level participates in an
38
organisation which requires efficient effort on coordination among all people in the
ERP projects (Falkowski et al., 1998). Upgrade is an ERP project undertaken during
post-exploitation stage. Although ERP upgrade project is perceived smaller
compared with the initial implementation project, the effective and efficient
management for the project can be said as important as the initial implementation
because it influences tremendously to the improvement of the continuous business
process in a ERP adopted firm (Olson and Zhao, 2007).
Efficient interdepartmental communication and collaboration
A successful ERP maintenance and support requires to work together co-ordinately
among the all ERP related parties throughout the ERP journey (Law et al., 2009).
Since the differences in terms of knowledge, interest and expectations (Smith and
McKeen, 1992) between various departments involved in ERP context within an
organisation whatever the period time of implementation or after-implementation
stage, it might cause series of conflicts within those different departmental members.
And this is one thing that must be dealt with because the chief objective of ERP is to
closely integrate various business functions (Davenport, 1998; Robinson and Dilts,
1999; Akkermans and Van Helden, 2002). Furthermore, closer interdepartmental
collaboration is identified one of major benefits of post-ERP system (McAfee, 1998)
and “Communication is the oil that keeps everything working properly” (Schwalbe,
2000). Clearly, efficient communication and collaboration between those
departments in a firm appears vital to the success of ERP system throughout the
lifecycle.
Efficient communication between business personnel and IT experts
Communication between business staff and IT experts is a CSF for ERP systems
(Grant, 2003). Without effective communication between IT experts and users, can
lead to user‟s dissatisfaction (Edstrom, 1977) and influence the acceptance
(Amoako-Gyampah and Salam, 2004) to the system and this could happen in any
phases of the system life cycle. With effective communication among these two
groups, on the other hand, can avoid misconceptions (Al-Mudimigh et al., 2001) for
system requirements which can cause the waste of time and costs for the firm and
39
even the customers‟ negative feeling as a result of the delay of promises of the
requirements to them. As the impact caused, this factor determine the adopted ERP
system success or disaster to the adopted firm.
Sound user consultation and support
The requests from users refer to the consultation and support for the system‟s
behaviour, rules and functions (Ng et al., 2002). User support and consultation may
implicate range from the manipulation and the information to the improvement of the
system. Timely user support such as the manipulation of the system and the
correction of the data found can prevent the problem and ensure the jobs have been
done right; and use consultation for such as feasibility of new ideas for improvement
can benefit the system. As the importance, user support including help desk, on-line
user manuals and IT experts should be well established (Wee, 2000). Therefore,
responding to user-support requests is considered a significant ERP maintenance
activity (Ng et al., 2002) which is noted a important activity during post-adoption
ERP.
Sufficient funds and resources for supporting essential activities
In ERP context, the necessary resources include time, money and personnel
resources (Nah and Delgado, 2006), these are critical for a firm to realise the benefits
from the ERP package (Robinson and Dilts, 1999). Upgrade is one activity that may
be undertaken several times after adopting, and is a high cost activity (Montgomery,
2004). The upgrades can be taken because of new functionality, expansion or
consolidations of system, technology stack changes, de-support of the current system
to reduce the risk of vendor support termination, and de-bugs (Swanton, 2004). And
any of these needs sufficient funds and resources to support the executions.
4.2 System Factors
System response time
A fast system response time is always expected by system users when they access to
it but it is not guaranteed if the infrastructures of ICT and the relationships between
ERP system and others and database did not design properly or do not work properly
40
together (Damodaran and Olphert, 2000). It appears a fundamental factor to the
success use of gone-live ERP system.
Current system functions meet business requirements
A best matched ERP package to the business process and information needs is
critical because it can ensure the minimised customisation, adoption and use (Janson
and Subramanian, 1996). Indeed, the use of the system is limited if the current-
running system cannot meet the business requirements which could increase more
efforts to users for the use of the system to run their day-to-day jobs than before and
likely form negative feeling to the system day after day, and eventually the
capabilities and benefits of the ERP system that it naturally has cannot realise and be
reaped in the invested firms, it therefore appears critical to the introduced ERP
system.
Sufficient system flexibility for coping with continuous emerging business
requirements
It is emphasised by the world‟s leading ERP vendor that the design of information
system should take the flexibility into consideration (Peng and Nunes, 2009a) to
enable enough preparation for the necessary changes that come up by the continuous
emerging requirements in organisations. ERP changes may derive from either ERP
vendor, end users and IT specialists (Ng et al., 2002) with different intentions. And a
flexible ERP package that can deal with those requirements from any of them
without substantial changes to it can ensure the system continuous generating
benefits for a firm in a lasting basis which should be therefore critical to both ERP
stabilisation and continuous improvement and extension stages.
System use authority and account control and management
The control and management of user authority is vital to the implemented ERP
system, as ill-control and management may cause that the data is not only accessed
but also modified by irrelevant people (Peng and Nunes, 2009b). These can lead to
problems range from data security and confidentiality to data accuracy which should
be crucial to any organisations. Despite the authority and account were defined and
41
given in implementation stage, there are still new account, authority change, the
change of account holder and etc. that happen during ERP exploitation. Thus, an
adopted ERP cannot succeed without well-controlled and managed the use authority
and account.
A sound system for problem report, troubleshooting, and its control and management
The effective troubleshooting when encountering errors with the system is critical
(Holland et al., 1999; Ngai et al., 2008). Any feedbacks or problems from users have
to be confirmed that is received and performed on (Falkowski et al., 1998). Indeed,
problems need to be carefully followed up until it is resolved as any of them could
cause huge amount of loss especially significant in ERP environment because of its
organisational-wide characteristic; moreover, the loss could sustained expand if the
problem is ignored. Therefore, any problem must be soundly controlled and managed
from the report, troubleshooting to the resolved confirmation by the reporter to
ensure that the problem is tracked, fixed, and also recorded at the end.
Retain ERP system related documentation and know-how
With many modules involved, ERP system is commonly known an organisational-
wide information system, it thus often involves a large amount of knowledge,
experiences and resources such as the documentation of implementation inside and
outside an ERP-adopted company (Nah et al., 2003). IT staff have usually
accumulated extensive ERP-related knowledge through not only the adoption but
also exploitation stages (Scott and Vessey, 2000) which enable them to sustain the
system running and undertake the imperative activities such as upgrade, extension
functions. However, it is not uncommon that staff has not always hold positive
attitude to share their know-how or information to others without any concerns
(Martinsons and Westwood, 1997); furthermore, the loss of ERP-related staff means
the loss valuable and costly know-how and experiences at the same time (Peng and
Nunes, 2009a) if a firm never tries hard to extract and retain those assets inside the
brain of the experienced staff. Thus it can be seen that retaining ERP related
knowledge and know-how is certainly necessary for ERP-owned firms in their ERP
journeys.
42
Continued system review
The review of the system can evaluate whether the performance of the system is
match the business goals and objectives defined which is a critical success factor for
any IS including ERP system (Ngai et al., 2008). The improvements can be planned
and then performed if the system is not achieving what they should be after the
review; in addition, the system is likely changing over time. As a result, continued
system review is critical factor in the success ERP system during its continuous
improvement and enhancement period.
Strategy decision about the extent of ERP customisation
The degree of customisation in ERP system is a strategic decision that can influence
the costs, time and risks of implementation, the upgrade and maintenance of go-lived
ERP system (Janson and Subramanian, 1996; Davenport, 1998; Nah and Delgado,
2006). In addition, more customisations can push ERP adopters into more dangerous
situations when the IT experts who have modified the system are no longer in the
firms, and therefore threaten the success in terms of maintenance and upgrade in
post-implementation phase (Law et al., 2009). Inability to benefits from vendor‟s
maintenance and upgrade for the provided package (Janson and Subramanian, 1996;
Nah and Delgado, 2006) is another significant factor associated with the
customisation issue . Consequently, customisation of ERP system should be kept as
minimum as possible (Sumner, 1999; Rosario, 2000; Shanks et al., 2000; Murray and
Coffin, 2001). However, the update needs to the system are frequently requested
during post-adoption stage in order to meet continuous change needs (Law et al.,
2009) which may need management to choose to change the native ERP package to
fit business needs or reverse (Somers and Nelson, 2001). In this dilemma, the
decision about the extent of customisation critically influences the success of ERP
post-implementation.
Sound system testing after updating
Sound system testing is extremely important to the implementation success (Rosario,
2000; Al-Mashari et al., 2003). Similarly, any changes made during the post-
implementation have to be rigorously tested before it is deployed to product
43
environment (Yakovlev and Anderson, 2001), otherwise, it could lead to adopted
organisations toward a disaster. Obviously, sound testing for changes made during
ERP exploitation is a critical factor to the success of ERP system in the stage.
Data quality
The data quality such as accuracy, availability is a fundamental requirement for the
success of ERP implementation (Nah and Delgado, 2006) and an effective ERP
system (Somers and Nelson, 2001). With the highly integrated nature, the data that
converted from previous used system and exchanging with other information systems
properly is critical for achieving the integration benefits (Somers and Nelson, 2001).
To achieve data quality is apparently not easy task (Somers and Nelson, 2001) but
critical in ERP environment both implementation and post-implementation success.
4.3 Personnel Factors
Personnel’s understanding on system manipulation, new business processes and
system objectives and goal
Every ERP user is trained on how they work with the system and how they act and
affect to the business processes, is one thing that must be done at least, because the
insufficient of user‟s understanding on system manipulation and new business
processes are often seen as the reasons that lead to ERP investment failures (Somers
and Nelson, 2001). Gupta (2000) emphasised that the use training must achieve
the understanding of the business processes behind the ERP system. In addition to
the use and business changes, the understanding of the objective goal can acquire the
acceptance and support of all personnel who affected by the changes (Mahrer, 1999)
which appear particularly important in stabilisation stage. All in all, the
understanding of the three aspects mentioned of the staff is critical in ERP
exploitation.
Sound education and training materials and program
In order to achieve the user understands of the necessary skills and knowledge on
ERP context, the formal training and education should be supplied (Bingi et al., 1999;
Holland et al., 1999; Shanks et al., 2000; Nah et al., 2001; Somers and Nelson, 2001;
44
Al-Mashari et al., 2003) and the quality of education is not only important to the
implementation but also to the post-implementation (Law et al., 2009). It is also
critical to train and re-skill IT expert professional development (Nah et al., 2001).
Except the sound training and educating programmes, the quality materials including
training materials and user manuals are also critical after implementing (Wee, 2000),
which can substantially contribute the development of the needed abilities of the
personnel in operating and maintaining the ERP package (Law et al., 2009). Also in
order to meet continuous changes in business needs (Bingi et al., 1999) and also the
turnover of personnel, adopted firms should provided sound programmes and
materials in a continuous basis after implemented ERP environment.
In-house IT specialists and cross-functional personnel
In-house IT specialists and business-knowledgeable personnel have been defined
essential for success to ERP implementation (Bingi et al., 1999; Sumner, 1999;
Shanks et al., 2000; Somers and Nelson, 2001; Al-Mashari et al., 2003) and post-
implementation (Pan et al., 2009). The continuous development and the retention of
ERP skills and knowledge are important in ERP exploitation (Law et al., 2009) since
the success the exploitation related activities including maintenance, review and
enhancement relies on the sustained effort and contributions of IT experts (Pan et al.,
2009). In addition, it is believed that cross-functional personnel are as important as
IT experts in terms of improvement aspect. With cross-functional view, they can act
an intermediary role between various departments and active improvers as they see
things from a higher and overall organisational view rather than only one particular
department which are likely to find out problems without departmental boundaries
and can therefore possibly help improvement projects toward a right direction
organisationally. Thus, IT experts and cross-functional personnel are argued
significant success factors to ERP exploitation according to the above reasons.
Qualified and well-trained user
Numerous exploitation failures because of unqualified ERP end users has been
indicated (Zhu et al., 2009). As unqualified users are essentially to be linked with
likely producing more hand-made errors (Gupta, 2000) which may cause a huge
45
amount of loss for a firm because of the nature of ERP system as mentioned earlier.
Furthermore, the users with lower-educated and lower-trained (Wright and
Donaldson, 2002), and lack computer literacy or computer phobia (Bingi et al., 1999)
appear significant barriers to the use and the learning necessary knowledge of ERP
system. It therefore significantly affects the success of using ERP system throughout
the entire post-adoption period.
User’s trust and willingness attitude to the utility of the system
“Information technologies cannot by itself influence the productivity of a company.
The main efficiency factor lies in the way people use these technologies” (Botta-
Genoulaz et al., 2005: 515). The user‟ trust and willingness attitude can affect the
effective use of the system because users‟ unconfident to the system can lead to
reluctant to use it (Pan et al., 2009). Moreover, it is believed that the more use will
more likely yield benefits as it is more likely to receive the full benefits if the full
functionality of a system is be used. And therefore the extent and effectiveness of the
usage may determine whether the expected benefits are being realised or not (Delone
and McLean, 2003) which demonstrates its importance to the gone-live ERP system.
IT specialists’ understanding on users’ business and problems
IT specialists need to educated on not only the new system but also business
processes (Sumner, 1999). As it is indicated that IT people can provide the higher
quality of the system support services to the clients if the experts understand their
business and problems (Magal and Carr, 1988). Indeed, IT people‟s understanding of
their users can prevent misconception between their communication regarding
system use, enhancement and so on which can reinforce the effective communication,
and on the other hand, prevent the cost caused from the ill communication. More
importantly, IT staff can possibly be who help the firm to achieve IT and business
strategic alignment process, if they also have business knowledge. Thus, this factor
presents critical to ERP exploitation.
46
4.4 External Resources Factors
Qualified and experienced consultant support and advice, Sufficient support and
services from vendor and Vendor partnerships
The external expertise and resources (Thong et al., 1996; Sedera et al., 2003) – refers
to the knowledge, technical supports and training from external entities like vendors
and consultants (Ifinedo, 2008) – plus the relationships with their client companies
(Willcocks and Sykes, 2000) have been recognised that positively influence the
success level of implemented ERP system (Thong et al., 1996; Markus and Tanis,
2000; Sedera et al., 2003). With prior experience accumulated through all client
companies, qualified and experienced consultants can provide professional and focal
advice and support to their clients, and can complement the internal technical and
knowledge shortage (Barki et al., 1993; Cameron and Meyer, 1998; Clemons, 1998;
Peng and Nunes, 2009a), which can eventually help the clients to realise the benefits
from both managerial and operational aspects (Zhu et al., 2009). ERP vendors act an
important role in post-implementation because they can provide assistances
including emergency maintenance, update software patches or releases and special
user (Somers and Nelson, 2001; Zhang et al., 2005)[4] which are unlikely to be
managed and executed by any user company without vendor‟s involvement (Law et
al., 2009). During ERP exploitation, implemented ERP firms exchange information
and knowledge with the two external parties, invest continuously new modules and
upgrades to extend the functionality in order to meet their needs for generating better
benefits which involve partnership trusts (Somers and Nelson, 2001; Robey et al.,
2002; Haines and Goodhue, 2003; Gefen, 2004), hence, the long-term relationships
with them are essentially important. By concluding above points, these factors
influence largely to a success ERP exploitation.
Use of vendor’s development tools
Owing to the benefits in terms of money and time costs (Somers and Nelson, 2001;
Nah and Delgado, 2006) and knowledge acquirement (Nah and Delgado, 2006), the
implemented firms should maximally utilise the development technologies provided
by the vendors whenever the introduction at adoption stage and the enhancement and
47
other activities at exploitation stage. It also avoid the disadvantages of the
customisation, therefore, this factor implicates the successful development in ERP
post-implementation.
4.5 Ontology of CSFs for ERP post-implementation
By looking at Table 2, you will see the overall ontology of the CSFs for ERP post-
implementation with 28 factors that classified into four main categories, namely
organisation, system, personnel and external resource. Apart from the four categories
mentioned above, the more precisely sub categories for each main category are also
provided in the same table.
Table 2: Ontology of CSFs for ERP post-implementation
Main category Sub category Code CSF
Organisation Management OM1 Continued support by top and senior
management
OM2 Sufficient consultation and communication
with IT specialist and user before the
decision is made by top management
OM3 Clear future system enhancement plan
OM4 Efficient management on ERP system related
project
Communication OC1 Efficient interdepartmental communication
and collaboration
OC2 Efficient communication between business
personnel and IT experts
OC3 Sound user consultation and support
Resource OR1 Sufficient funds and resources for supporting
essential activities
Mean of the organisation factors
48
System Performance SP1 System response time
SP2 Current system functions meet business
requirements
SP3 Sufficient system flexibility for coping with
continuous emerging business requirements
Control and
Management
SC1 System use authority and account control and
management
SC2 A sound system for problem report,
troubleshooting, and its control and
management
SC3 Retain ERP system related documentation
and know-how
SC4 Continued system review
SC5 Strategy decision about the extent of ERP
customisation
Maintenance SM1 Sound system testing after updating
SM2 Data quality
Personnel Education and
Training
PE1 Personnel‟s understanding on system
manipulation, new business processes and
system objectives and goal
PE2 Sound education and training materials and
program
PE3 Quality and well-trained user
Competence PC1 In-house IT specialists and cross-functional
personnel
PC2 IT specialist‟s understanding on user‟s
business and problems
Attitude PA1 User‟s trust, willingness attitude and to the
49
utility of the system
External resource Consultant EC1 Qualified and experienced consultant support
and advice
Vendor EV1 Sufficient support and services from vendor
EV2 Vendor partnerships
EV3 Use of vendor‟s development tools
This ontology with 28 CSFs and four categories, as mentioned in the methodology
chapter, was examined in the case study through a questionnaire survey. The analysis
and findings will be presented in the following chapter.
50
5. Quantitative Data Analysis
The quantitative data was analysed to identify how the participants of this study
perceive the theoretical ontology of CSFs for ERP exploitation that developed by the
researcher in the present study. The general findings will firstly be drawn in this
chapter to present the profiles of the participants in the questionnaire survey.
Secondly, the result of the ontology investigation will be discussed in the next
section. Thirdly, the key factors will be identified. This chapter will end with the
summary in the end of this chapter.
5.1 General Findings
The following three diagrams (Figure 3~5) give information about the profiles of the
respondents of the questionnaire survey. The first figure below demonstrates the
distribution of the roles of the respondents in the survey. Significantly, more than
half amounts of respondents are end users, with 61% of the total. By contrast, as
being anticipated, 11% of the total questionnaires were responded by operational
managers in the firm. The remaining 28% were contributed by the IT specialists of
the ERP system. The result of the distribution of the respondents by role as shown at
Figure 3 is not surprised and actually anticipated as it just reflects the nature of an
organisation in terms of the distribution of the personnel. Therefore, the reasonable
response rates from the three parties actually support this study to gain a
comprehensive view for ERP exploitation success.
51
Figure 3: Respondent profile by role
By having a glance of the Figure 4 and 5, it is evident to note a fact that the majority
of the respondents are veteran in terms of both ERP adoption and post-adoption as
Figure 4 shows the experience of the respondents in participating the previous
implementation projects while Figure 5 presents the duration of the use or
maintenance of the respondents. As can be seen in Figure 4, 76% of respondents
have had experiences in terms of the participation of the prior adoption projects in
the firm, in which some of them participated fully and some partly, with 33% and
43% of people respectively. Oppositely, 24% of people reported that they did not
participate in any of prior ERP implementation projects in the firm.
Figure 4: Respondent by the participant experience in prior ERP projects
Operational
manager
11%
End user
61%
IT expert
28%
Yes, all
33%
Yes, partly
43%
No
24%
52
Moreover, it is also obvious a fact seen in Figure 5 that people who have been
having experience in using or maintaining the ERP system for more than 2 years
(85%), are far more than the people who have been having less experience in ERP
environment (15% in total), with 2% people for 1 year to 2 years, another 2% for 3
months to 1 year, 8% for less than 3 months and 3% never. It may need to point out
here that the 3% for “Never” group in the chart - were answered by operational
managers – can be speculated that some managers may utilise the information
generated by ERP system but may not use the system in person.
These results to some extent can raise the level of the confidence for this survey, and
prove that the selected case company is very appropriate to this survey in terms of
the experience of ERP post-implementation.
Figure 5: Respondent by the duration of the use or maintenance on the system
5.2 Findings of the investigation of the ontology
Overall, the respondents‟ perceptions towards the theoretical ontology of CSFs for
post-implementation developed by the present study are positive. Table 3 shows that
the means for the importance of the 28 CSFs range from 3.96 to 4.84 (5=extremely
important, 4=important, 3=moderate important, 2=slightly important, 1=not
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Never
~ 3 months
3 months ~ 1 year
1 year ~ 2years
2 years ~
3%
8%
2%
2%
85%
53
important at all). Clearly, the respondents‟ overall perceptions are far higher the
average 3.
By looking at the means of the factors of each category, it is evident that
“Organisation” factors were viewed as the most important to the ERP success in
post-adoption stage by the respondents in the survey, with the mean 4.58 of the
category. The second highest mean among the four categories is the “System”
category which is at 4.33. Followed by the “Personnel” category is the third
important for the success of the stage that this research focus on, with slightly lower
mean of 4.30 in this category. Finally, the “External resource” (4.16) was responded
as the least important to the ERP post-implementation success compared to the other
three categories according to Table 3.
Table 3: Means of the 28 CSFs listed by category
Main category Sub category Code CSF Mean SD
Organisation Management OM1 Continued support by top and
senior management
4.84 0.40
OM2 Sufficient consultation and
communication with IT specialist
and user before the decision is
made by top management
4.68 0.53
OM3 Clear future system enhancement
plan
4.46 0.65
OM4 Efficient management on ERP
system related project
4.36 0.60
Communication OC1 Efficient interdepartmental
communication and collaboration
4.80 0.45
OC2 Efficient communication between
business personnel and IT experts
4.67 0.49
OC3 Sound user consultation and
support
4.46 0.65
54
Resource OR1 Sufficient funds and resources for
supporting essential activities
4.42 0.70
Mean of the organisation factors 4.58
System Performance SP1 System response time 4.39 0.65
SP2 Current system functions meet
business requirements
4.28 0.80
SP3 Sufficient system flexibility for
coping with continuous emerging
business requirements
4.37 0.79
SC1 System use authority and account
control and management
4.25 0.81
Control and
Management
SC2 A sound system for problem
report, troubleshooting, and its
control and management
4.42 0.70
SC3 Retain ERP system related
documentation and know-how
4.38 0.71
SC4 Continued system review 3.96 0.80
SC5 Strategy decision about the extent
of ERP customisation
4.15 0.69
Maintenance SM1 Sound system testing after
updating
4.46 0.62
SM2 Data quality 4.66 0.62
Mean of system factors 4.33
Personnel Education and
Training
PE1 Personnel‟s understanding on
system manipulation, new
business processes and system
objectives and goal
4.38 0.64
PE2 Sound education and training
materials and program
4.36 0.67
55
PE3 Quality and well-trained user 4.04 0.88
Competence PC1 In-house IT specialists and cross-
functional personnel
4.35 0.69
PC2 IT specialist‟s understanding on
user‟s business and problems
4.42 0.71
Attitude PA1 User‟s trust, willingness attitude
and to the utility of the system
4.27 0.74
Mean of personnel factors 4.30
External
resource
Consultant EC1 Qualified and experienced
consultant support and advice
4.30 0.68
Vendor EV1 Sufficient support and services
from vendor
4.14 0.75
EV2 Vendor partnerships 4.09 0.74
EV3 Use of vendor‟s development
tools
4.10 0.83
Mean of external resource factors 4.16
The table below is the frequency table of the importance of the identified 28 CSFs
which is listed in the order of the main categories. Overall, it is significant a fact that
the CSFs given were mainly perceived as extremely important or important to the
success of ERP post-implementation by the respondents of the survey according to
Table 4, which just responses to the fact that the means of almost all factors are well
above 4.00 (only one factor = 3.96). The minor participants responded the CSFs
were moderate important, and the mere respondents perceived these factors slightly
important or not important at all to the ERP exploitation success.
In terms of organisation category, all CSFs among this category were perceived as
extremely important to the success by more than half number of the respondents
(78%~53.3%), except the factors “Efficient management on ERP system related
project” were by 41.3% of respondents. For the success of the adopted ERP system,
56
this factor was mainly perceived as important with 50% of the respondents. The
minor of the respondents answered “moderate important” for some factors among
this category, with 8% to 1% of the respondents. The factor OM4 and OM1 were
respectively perceived as slightly important for ERP post-adoption by only 1 person.
Nobody answered “not important at all” for any factors among this category.
Similarly, “extremely important” and “important” were the most popular answers for
the CSFs of ERP exploitation in the system category, with significant amount (94.5%
~ 70.7%) of the respondents. Again, a minor amount of the respondents perceived
that the factors among this category were moderate important to the success of ERP
post-adoption, with 27.2%~4.3% of the participants. The relatively high 27.2% is
contributed by the factor SC4; as a result the factor is the least important factor
among the 28 factors in this survey. No more than 2 people chose the answers of
“Slightly important” and “Not important at all” for the factors in the system category.
Not much differently, the majority of the respondents (96.7%~75%) chose
“Extremely important” and “Important” as their answers for personnel CSFs of ERP
post-implementation. And 19.6%~0% of participants chose the answer of the
“Moderate important” for the factors in the same category. No more than 6% of the
participants picked the answer of “Slightly important” and “Not important at all” for
the factors in the personnel category.
Slightly different from the other categories, the most popular answer for all external
resource CSFs of ERP post-adoption was “Important” (52.2%~48.9%). In addition,
there are 8.7%~16.3% respondents in the answer of “Moderate important”. As the
result, the factors among this category are relatively lower ranking in the importance
to the ERP exploitation success compared to the other three categories. Fewer than
5% of the respondents contributed the answer of “Not important” in this category.
57
Table 4: Frequency table for CSFs of ERP post-implementation
Code Critical success factors
N=92
Extremely
Important
Important Moderate
Important
Slightly
Important
Not
Important
Organisation CSFs F % F % F % F % F %
OM1 Continued support by top and
senior management
78 84.8 13 14.1 1 1.1 0 0.0 0 0.0
OM2 Sufficient consultation and
communication with IT
specialist and user before the
decision is made by top
management
66 71.7 23 25.0 3 3.3 0 0.0 0 0.0
OM3 Clear future system
enhancement plan
50 54.3 34 37.0 8 8.7 0 0.0 0 0.0
OM4 Efficient management on ERP
system related project
38 41.3 50 54.3 3 3.3 1 1.1 0 0.0
OC1 Efficient interdepartmental
communication and
collaboration
76 82.6 14 15.2 2 2.2 0 0.0 0 0.0
OC2 Efficient communication
between business personnel
and IT experts
63 68.5 28 30.4 1 1.1 0 0.0 0 0.0
OC3 Sound user consultation and
support
50 54.3 34 37.0 8 8.7 0 0.0 0 0.0
OR1 Sufficient funds and resources
for supporting essential
activities
49 53.3 34 37.0 8 8.7 1 1.1 0 0.0
System CSFs F % F % F % F % F %
SP1 System response time 44 47.8 40 43.5 8 8.7 0 0.0 0 0.0
SP2 Current system functions meet
business requirements
41 44.6 40 43.5 8 8.7 2 2.2 1 1.1
58
SP3 Sufficient system flexibility
for coping with continuous
emerging business
requirements
48 52.2 33 35.9 9 9.8 1 1.1 1 1.1
SC1 System use authority and
account control and
management
42 45.7 33 35.9 15 16.3 2 2.2 0 0.0
SC2 A sound system for problem
report, troubleshooting, and its
control and management
47 51.1 39 42.4 5 5.4 0 0.0 1 1.1
SC3 Retain ERP system related
documentation and know-how
46 50.0 36 39.1 9 9.8 1 1.1 0 0.0
SC4 Continued system review 25 27.2 40 43.5 25 27.2 2 2.2 0 0.0
SC5 Strategy decision about the
extent of ERP customisation
29 31.5 49 53.3 13 14.1 1 1.1 0 0.0
SM1 Sound system testing after
updating
48 52.2 38 41.3 6 6.5 0 0.0 0 0.0
SM2 Data quality 67 72.8 20 21.7 4 4.3 1 1.1 0 0.0
Personnel CSFs F % F % F % F % F %
PE1 Personnel‟s understanding on
system manipulation, new
business processes and system
objectives and goal
43 46.7 41 44.6 8 8.7 0 0.0 0 0.0
PE2 Sound education and training
materials and program
42 45.7 42 45.7 7 7.6 1 1.1 0 0.0
PE3 Quality and well-trained user 32 34.8 37 40.2 18 19.6 5 5.4 0 0.0
PC1 In-house IT specialists and
cross-functional personnel
43 46.7 38 41.3 11 12.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
PC2 IT specialist‟s understanding
on user‟s business and
46 50.0 43 46.7 0 0.0 2 2.2 1 1.1
59
problems
PA1 User‟s trust, willingness
attitude and to the utility of
the system
39 42.4 41 44.6 10 10.9 2 2.2 0 0.0
External Resource CSFs F % F % F % F % F %
EC1 Qualified and experienced
consultant support and advice
38 41.3 45 48.9 8 8.7 1 1.1 0 0.0
EV1 Sufficient support and services
from vendor
31 33.7 45 48.9 14 15.2 2 2.2 0 0.0
EV3 Use of vendor‟s development
tools
30 32.6 46 50.0 12 13.0 3 3.3 1 1.1
EV2 Vendor partnerships 27 29.3 48 52.2 15 16.3 2 2.2 0 0.0
F=Frequency
Table 5 demonstrates the means for the 28 CSFs of ERP post-adoption in
descending order of importance. “Continued support by top and senior” was deemed
as the most important factor to the adopted ERP system success by this research‟
respondents, likewise, “Efficient interdepartmental communication and collaboration”
and “Sufficient consultation and communication with IT specialist and user before
the decision is made by top management” was the second and third important factors
respectively among the 28 factors, and so on; whereas “Continued system review”
was ranked the least important factor in this survey which with its mean 3.96 is
however still well above the average.
Table 5: Mean ranking of CSFs by degree of importance in ERP exploitation
Ranking CSF Mean SD
1 OM1 Continued support by top and senior management 4.84 0.40
2 OC1 Efficient interdepartmental communication and collaboration 4.80 0.45
3 OM2 Sufficient consultation and communication with IT specialist and
user before the decision is made by top management
4.68 0.53
60
4 OC2 Efficient communication between business personnel and IT
experts
4.67 0.49
5 SM2 Data quality 4.66 0.62
6 OM3 Clear future system enhancement plan 4.46 0.65
6 OC3 Sound user consultation and support 4.46 0.65
6 SM1 Sound system testing after updating 4.46 0.62
7 OR1 Sufficient funds and resources for supporting essential activities 4.42 0.70
7 SC2 A sound system for problem report, troubleshooting, and its control
and management
4.42 0.70
7 PC2 IT specialist‟s understanding on user‟s business and problems 4.42 0.71
8 SP1 System response time 4.39 0.65
9 SC3 Retain ERP system related documentation and know-how 4.38 0.71
9 PE1 Personnel‟s understanding on system manipulation, new business
processes and system objectives and goal
4.38 0.64
10 SP3 Sufficient system flexibility for coping with continuous emerging
business requirements
4.37 0.79
11 OM4 Efficient management on ERP system related project 4.36 0.60
11 PE2 Sound education and training materials and program 4.36 0.67
12 PC1 In-house IT specialists and cross-functional personnel 4.35 0.69
13 EC1 Qualified and experienced consultant support and advice 4.30 0.68
14 SP2 Current system functions meet business requirements 4.28 0.80
15 PA1 User‟s trust, willingness attitude and to the utility of the system 4.27 0.74
16 SC1 System use authority and account control and management 4.25 0.81
17 SC5 Strategy decision about the extent of ERP customisation 4.15 0.69
18 EV1 Sufficient support and services from vendor 4.14 0.75
19 EV3 Use of vendor‟s development tools 4.10 0.83
61
20 EV2 Vendor partnerships 4.09 0.74
21 PE3 Quality and well-trained user 4.04 0.88
22 SC4 Continued system review 3.96 0.80
5.3 Key Factors
The finding above, as mentioned in chapter methodology, was used as the
fundamental of the interview. In order to focus on the most important factors in the
interviews, the researcher firstly identified the key factors among the 28 factors
according to the rankings of the factors in Table 5. Consequently, with a cut point of
4.40, the top eleven factors were chosen as the key factors or questions for the in-
depth interviews with parts of participants in the questionnaire survey. The selected
key factors can be seen in Table 6.
Table 6: Key factors of ERP post-implementation success
Ranking Code CSF Mean SD
1 OM1 Continued support by top and senior management 4.84 0.40
2 OC1 Efficient interdepartmental communication and collaboration 4.80 0.45
3 OM2 Sufficient consultation and communication with IT specialist
and user before the decision is made by top management
4.68 0.53
4 OC2 Efficient communication between business personnel and IT
experts
4.67 0.49
5 SM2 Data quality (Accuracy, relevancy, consistency, currency,
completeness, presentation)
4.66 0.62
6 OM3 Clear future system enhancement plan 4.46 0.65
6 OC3 Sound user consultation and support 4.46 0.65
6 SM1 Sound system testing after updating 4.46 0.62
7 OR1 Sufficient funds and resources for supporting essential
activities
4.42 0.70
62
7 SC2 A sound system for problem report, troubleshooting, and its
control and management
4.42 0.70
7 PC2 IT specialist‟s understanding on user‟s business and problems 4.42 0.71
5.4 Summary
First of all, the general results demonstrate the distribution of the roles of the
respondents within the three groups; the result is as expected as it just reflects the
nature of an organisation in terms of the distribution of the personnel. Furthermore,
the majority of the respondents are veteran in terms of both ERP implementation and
post-implementation according the rest results in the section. Thus, the selected case
study appears very appropriate to the present research because of the experience of
ERP post-implementation which is just the focus of this research.
Secondly, the respondents‟ perceptions towards the theoretical ontology of CSFs for
post-implementation developed by the present study are positive and the respondents‟
perceptions are far higher the average. By ranking of the mean of each CSF category,
the factors in the organisation category were perceived as the most important CSFs
of the ERP exploitation by the participants in this survey. The system, personnel and
external resource were perceived as the second, third and fourth important CSFs
categories respectively in the same survey according to the result.
Thirdly, the 28 CSFs given were mainly viewed as extremely important or important
to the success of ERP post-implementation by the respondents of the survey
according to the result shown at Table 4. The minor participants responded the CSFs
were “moderate important” and only small number of respondents perceived these
factors as slightly important or not important at all to the ERP exploitation success.
Among the 28 CSFs given, “Continued support by top and senior” was perceived as
the most important factor to the adopted ERP system success by this research‟
respondents whereas “Continued system review” was ranked the least important
factor in this survey which is however still well above the average according to the
result shown in Table 5.
63
Finally, the top 11 key factors were identified according to the ranking table of the
factors, which were extracted as the focuses to conduct the interviews in the same
case company. And the analysis and findings of the interviews will be seen in the
following chapter.
64
6. Qualitative Data Analysis and Findings
The qualitative data was analysed to in-depth explore why the top 11 CSFs were
deemed that critically influence the success of the adopted ERP system. This chapter
consists of two parts. The analysis and findings will firstly be provided. Followed a
summary will be given at the end of the chapter.
6.1 The Empirical Perceptions to the Importance of the Key
Factors
In this section, the analysis of each key factor, along with the quotes extracted from
the interviews, will be presented in the respective paragraph, and the findings of each
factor will be given at the end of the paragraph. The analyses and findings are
presented as follows:
Continuous support by top and senior management
This factor is identified as the top one that influences the success of ERP exploitation
according the questionnaire survey in the present study. Indeed, the interviewees
gave several points that demonstrate this factor continuously acts a critical role after
the ERP system has gone live. One participant mentioned:
System processes are never permanent because of the going live of the system. […]
Generally, there are always customers’ requirements, internal process changes and
so on which require system enhancements or upgrades. So, we still need our top or
senior management continuous support to make these projects goes smoothly and
eventually succeed.
IT specialist A
The above illustration proves that the top and senior management support is still vital
to the adopted ERP system because the system needs to be continuous enhanced and
upgraded in order to meet the continuous business requirements during post-adoption
stage. The participants further supplemented the importance from several different
aspects:
65
Our requirements always need the IT’s support or sometimes need external vendors’
when our IT can’t provide us the solutions […] These needs higher level
management supports because they need a lot of resources and money to perform
those requirements.
System user A
Regardless of how you think important your proposal is and how hard the customers
push you, you just cannot do it if they don’t say ok to you. […] They generally have a
priority in their mind, and the priority will determine how much resources will be put
in. […] Furthermore, their attitude regarding the enhancements of the system itself
or our working processes, will encourage or discourage our enthusiasm to propose
the new enhancements because no one would like to spend a lot of efforts and time
on what your boss don’t like. […] In brief, the enhancements can be performed and
the success of the system will more likely to be achieved whey they support.
Operational manager
The point that I want to say here is, some changes such as enhancements and
upgrades are good for the system in the long run, users however usually don’t like
changes. In this situation, the higher level management support can strongly
influence them including the users and IT staff to cooperate within these projects.
You may know, this is just the way you work in any companies.
IT specialist A
According to the interpretations above, it is evident to note that the management
support intensively influence the ERP system in post-implementation stage in terms
of the authorisation of enhancement projects, the priority and resources of the
projects, as well as the attitudes of the relevant parties, which basically echoed the
arguments of the factor provided in the ontology chapter. In terms of the influence of
the attitudes, however, the operational manager told us that the management support
influences not only the users‟ resistance of the changes but also the motivation of the
staff regarding the system enhancement.
66
Efficient interdepartmental communication and collaboration
This factor is repeatedly indicated as CSF for implementation. The illustrations of
the participants demonstrate that the communication and its importance are not
reduced after the implementation project. The following three quotes from three
respective interviews illustrate why this factor is important to the ERP post-
implementation stage:
I think ERP going live doesn’t mean the communication is finished but another start
point. […] When users have started using the system, they often have new ideas to
the system. Therefore, except small changes they need to discuss and co-work
together within enhancement projects. […] We always find the difficulties are not
about the system itself but people.
IT specialist B
This is always very important. After going live, we still have continuous enhancement
projects, at this time, the cross-departmental people can’t stand any specific points
of views, we need to discuss together and cooperate with each other to reach a
balance … and to find the best solution from the company’s view.
Operational manager
When we conduct cross-module enhancements, we need to discuss how to achieve an
improvement without influencing to the relevant departments. […] when any
departments consider that the change will cause their original operations, the
project stops. And needless to say, the communication cannot carry on to the
technical aspect if we don’t reach an agreement first.
System user C
As IT specialist B said that “the difficulties are not about the system itself but
people”, the communication and cooperation between different interest parties is the
key to reach the overall best solutions of the enhancements of the adopted system
67
which must consider the overall respect and impacts according to the illustrations of
the interviews.
Sufficient consultation and communication with IT specialist and user before the
decision is made by top management
As being pointed out in the ontology chapter, the sufficient consultation and
communication with both IT and user sectors before top managers decision, is
important because it complements the lack of the top managers‟ knowledge in both
technical and operational aspects. The interviewees did give us the insights into the
importance in the both perspectives:
High level management think from overall benefit point of the view and this may
ignore the organisational and technical aspects. […] Sometimes they discuss and
promise the requirements with the customers on their own…of course, some ideas
were ideal but just unrealistic in current organisation or system situation … which
can largely increase our loading. […] As the subordinates, we can only follow the
orders. Therefore, the discussion before they decide is very important.
Operational manager
If the decision is wrong, the plan is wrong. The plan is wrong, the system is wrong.
IT specialist B
As IT point of view, we of course hope to retain the system as standard as possible.
[…] Lack of efficient communication before they make decisions may cause the
difficulties of both IT and user departments. Because user departments need to
change the use of the system and we might have to customise add-ons. […] The
communications before the decision can help top management to understand these
impacts and lead them to make overall considerations.
IT specialist A
Clearly, the decision made may cause the changes of the operations which may
greatly raise the loading in operational sectors due to the lack of the consideration in
68
current operational situation. On the other hand, it may lead to the development of
the adopted system toward non-standard or customised system in post-adoption stage
which can result negative impacts as discussed in the ontology chapter, if the top
managers ignore the technical aspect when making ERP related decisions.
Efficient communication between business personnel and IT experts
The all interviewees pointed out that communication between user and IT sectors is
important in terms of discussing for the new requirements during exploitation stage.
The following three quotes from three respective interviews interpret why this factor
is important to the ERP post-implementation:
If the requirement cannot be done right at the beginning, we waste time to re-
communicate, re-design and re-test. […] More importantly, if this is about an error-
collect requirement, the system cannot be fixed with all speed, we work under the
risks.
Operational manager
The management only care about the goal. […] The design of the system is
determined by the result of the communication between IT and users. […] The design
of the system determines whether the system is easy to use or not.
IT specialist B
Users’ requirements sometimes conflict with the current system. […] Effective
communication can well correlate the requirements and system together. That is,
effective communication can help us to develop the system with the considerations
both of user’s requirements and system structure
IT specialist A
The illustration of the operational manager reflects that the misconception of the
requirement may happen if the communication is ineffective, and consequently result
the waste of the resources as well as form the risks, which is expected as it has been
addressed in the literature and mentioned earlier chapter. However, both IT
69
specialists told us a new fact that an effective communication is not only to ensure
“Do the thing right” but also “Do the right thing” which should significantly
influence the development of the adopted ERP system in the long run.
Data quality
Data quality is crucial in ERP post-implementation because the adopted firms have
started using the system and its data to perform their daily works, the data quality
therefore directly influence the business of the adopted firms. For instance, three
participants mentioned how the data quality of the system important to their duties:
[…] Our daily work is based on the data of the system. The data must be correct
otherwise we cannot ensure we have done our works perfectly what we have to. […]
Then you know these are potential risks to company.
System user C
Because the impact is very huge if the data is wrong. […] If the system data is wrong,
the financial statements are all wrong. The managers make wrong decisions
according to the incorrect reports and the shareholders will be provided wrong
information regarding their invested company.
System user B
This is very important and fundamental. Our data quality is very good now. But
when I recall the period of time that the system has just gone live, I can say this is
invincible important. […] I can tell you one example then you will be able to imagine
how important it is. The data of the system involves billing to customers, so if the
data is error, the customer can refuse to pay for the bills, this result that they despair
to work with your company, and then they leave you temporarily or permanently
because the issues derived from the data problems.
Operational manager
According to the illustration of the participants above, the data quality not only
determines the quality of operational but also managerial and organisational levels in
70
the firm which present the high and extend impacts and risks behind the data quality,
and these do stress out the importance of this factor. In addition, the operational
manager gave us a clue that the data quality was particular perceived important when
the initial stage of the system going live or stabilisation stage defined in the present
study, whereas it is perceived as the fundamental to the current ERP system in the
firm which appears that the ERP system of the firm has developed to the continuous
improvement and extension stage in the ERP lifecycle.
Clear future system enhancement plan
Clear future enhancement plans for the implemented ERP system is vital according
to the following explanations:
We arrange our department human resource according to the plans. In IT
department, we now do things that scheduled in the-last-half-year or earlier plans.
Therefore, we need these plans to arrange for what we are going to do in the next
half year.
IT specialist B
This factor is particularly important to big enhancements. Due to big projects need
large amount of resources both of human or funding. […] Without specific plans, the
projects are therefore unlikely performed successfully no matter how much benefit
they are.
Operational manager
With limit resources, the adopted firms, who desire to successfully obtain more
benefits from the invested ERP system, need to well plan the related enhancements
to ensure there are sufficient resources to implementation them according to the
explanations above.
Sound user consultation and support
It is vital that users can consult about system manipulations and the feasibilities of
the new requirements, and receive technical supports if they face any problems when
71
using the ERP system. Two participants talked about how this factor important to
their use of the system:
As user section, we always need IT’s support. And we feel painful when we can’t
receive effective support. In daily use, the support helps us to perform our works in
time. On the other hand, we sometime need to consult about customers’ requirements,
I mean because we don’t know if it is doable in system aspect. […] So the
consultation is very important to user sections.
Operational manager
I think this is very important to any users. We generally have key staffs in each
department who generate manuals and answer questions for the use of the system for
their departmental staffs. […] we have to seek IT for help when we face technical
problem. Otherwise, we can’t carry on our works.
System user B
One participant provided an example that demonstrates the important of the
consultation:
I once had to change thousands amount of data, I though the system could help to do
so quickly, and it did. Without the consultation with IT, it might cost me more than
two weeks to change the data one by one and not guarantee for the correctness.
System user C
The illustrations of the interviewees demonstrate that sound user consultation and
support in ERP post-implementation acts an important role to sustain the daily use of
the system, to aid the improvement and to maximise the use of the system.
Sound system testing after updating
In ERP context, a sound system testing involves not only the validation for the new
changes but also no side effect derived from the changes. The following quotes
selected demonstrate how the participants perceived the importance of this factor:
72
System testing is the last line of defence. Without sound testing, not only influence the
original function but also cross-department functions. This can lead to the mess of
the data, and possibly cannot recover it. […] This can lend to a diffusible impact.
Operational manager
This is definitely important. We both, I mean IT and users need to test for the new
function when the function is finished. […] We test the system in the lights of the
scenarios to confirm whether the results match with our expected results.
System user B
If system testing is not sound, the release of the changed system is a disaster. […] We
and user sides both need to test for the system before the going live of the new
requirement. In terms of IT, we are even required two tests. One is tested by the
developer the other is tested by another IT staff. On the other hand, the users need to
provide us the report of the test. […] Therefore, you can see how important the
testing is to our company because no one is affordable for the loss.
IT specialist B
The operation manager did point out the nature of ERP system which emphasised the
importance of the testing for the changes in the ERP system, as well as the impacts
which was also pointed out by the other two interviewees. Furthermore, the
illustrations of system user B and IT specialist B demonstrate that a sound testing
involves a rigorous procedure including user and IT tests because of the impacts and
the complexity.
Sufficient funds and resources for supporting essential activities
Sufficient funds and resources are the fundamental for any necessary activities
undertaken during the post-implementation stage. The following quotes illustrate that
how the different participants perceived the importance of the factor from different
aspects:
73
“If you want your horse good, you have to feed it”. […] The amount of the data is
huge and continuous increasing. Therefore, we have to purchase storages. […] we
need to sign contract with the vendor every year in order to obtain continuous
technical supports from them. […] sometimes users’ requirements can’t be provided
a solution from us, like cross-functional customisation, we need to ask help from
external consultants’ support which require extra expenditure.
IT specialist A
The productivity of our department is restricted if the improvements can’t be
performed because lack of the resources.
Operational manager
The resource influence whether our requirements can be implemented or not which
influence whether we use the system do our daily work efficiently or not.
System user A
Clearly, the IT specialist pointed out that there must have sufficient funding for the
necessary expenditures to sustain the normal operation of the system, and for
receiving support from external specialist in order to implement some complex
enhancements. Otherwise, the productivity and the use of the system are restricted
according to the illustrations of the operational manger and system user A.
A sound system for problem report, troubleshooting, and its control and management
With the huge impacts, the problems have to soundly reported, handled, controlled
and managed in order to prevent the losses derived from the unresolved problems.
The following two interviewees interpreted the importance of this factor:
Every incident is a very important caution; without the control and management is
equal that you expect them to happen again and again. […] In fact, each incident or
problem hides large issue costs. Each emergence of the problems is an opportunity
to prevent the potential losses.
Operational manager
74
This is very important to financial department. You may know we work in a monthly
basis; therefore the end of each month is very important period of time to us. As a
result, we sometimes have to work on weekends and IT department also arrange
some IT to stay in the company in order to support us timely during the weekends.
System user B
Another participant gave a different illustration to the importance:
Except the impacts, I think I can say something else. Actually, the problem control
and management is very important because you might find out some problems that
you originally didn’t consider by reviewing the recurrent problems. As a result, we
can improve the system to permanently prevent the problem.
IT specialist B
The illustrations above demonstrate that a sound problem control and management
acts very important role in terms of timely resolving the problems to sustain the
normal working of the business, preventing the recurrent losses and to positively
discovering the hiding problems in the current-using ERP system.
IT specialist’s understanding on user’s business and problems
During post-implementation stage, there are continuous conversations and
collaborations between IT specialists and users regarding the use and enhancement
of the adopted ERP system. The following three respective interviewees talked about
why they perceived why this factor critically influences the success of the adopted
ERP system.
Experienced IT can point out users’ blind spots. Users are generally too customary
the way they work for their works, so they can’t notice the unnecessary actions or
better procedures for their work. […] When I find this situation, I will analyse as-is
and to-be working process to users and their will issue these improvements in their
a-half-year project plans.
IT specialist A
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IT’s understanding can help to have overall consideration when analyse and design
for the new requirements. … and also can reinforce to design an integrated system
this is very important in SAP system. … the lack of overall consideration for the new
requirements may lend to more requirements to improve the system.
IT specialist B
IT can help us a lot if they have our know-how. Firstly, of course, it speeds up the
communication in discussing new requirements and daily maintenance. Secondly, it
reduces the risks of misconception of our requirements. Finally, they act the active
role to communicate enhancement plans to us. Even some staffs have been working
in this company more than 10 years, they cannot really understand technical aspect.
At this point, IT can see the angle that we cannot see.
Operational manager
As can be seen in the above illustrations, the IT understanding in the user business
and problems enhances ranging from the communications for the daily system use
and new requirements consultations to the overall system structure and the
achievement in the alignment of the technology and business strategies which
undoubtedly presents the importance of the factor to the success of the adopted ERP
system.
6.2 Summary
This chapter presents the analysis and findings of the interviews with the three
different role interviewees (operational manager, system user and IT specialist) in the
case firm that in-depth discussed why each of the top 11 CSFs significantly influence
the success of ERP post-implementation. The top 11 CSFs include (1) Continuous
support by top and senior management, (2) Efficient interdepartmental
communication and collaboration, (3) sufficient consultation and communication
with IT specialist and user before the decision is made by top management, (4)
Efficient communication between business personnel and IT experts, (5) Data quality,
(6) clear future system enhancement plan, (7) sound user consultation and support, (8)
sound system testing after updating, (9) Sufficient funds and resources for supporting
76
essential activities, (10) A sound system for problem report, troubleshooting, and its
control and management, (11) IT specialist‟s understanding on user‟s business and
problems.
The findings in this chapter together with the findings in the quantitative data
analysis chapter will be further discussed synthetically in the following chapter.
77
7. Further Discussion for Findings
This chapter will be synthesised the findings of the quantitative and qualitative data
along with the arguments provided in the ontology chapter that intends to provide a
general discussion for the three components.
Generally speaking, all CSFs proposed by this study were perceived as extremely
important or important to the success of ERP exploitation according the results of the
questionnaire investigation which firmly support this study in answering the first
research question and accomplishing of the first and second research objectives.
Similarly, the findings also demonstrate that the four main categories pre-defined in
the ontology are all important in sustaining the success of the adopted ERP system.
However, it is significant a fact that the CSFs of organisation category were
perceived as the most important factors among that of the four categories in ERP
post-implementation (the second, third and fourth are system, personnel and external
resource categories respectively). Above findings partly answer the second research
question and appear a fact that the ERP is not only about technology but a
comprehensive product.
Among the all CSFs, the CSF “Continuous support by top and senior management”
was ranked the most significant factor that influences the success of the implemented
ERP system according to the finding of the questionnaire investigation. Indeed, the
participants of the interviews illustrated several points to support this result and the
arguments of this factor in the ontology chapter. Similarly, the results of the
interviews for the rest 10 key factors explicitly emphasised the importance which
again reflect to the results of the rankings, also support and even supplement to the
justifications of these factors in the ontology. To sum up, the findings of qualitative
analysis not only can support the justifications provided but also complement the
lack of the existing references for this specific phase in the present study.
Lately, it is a fact noted that not only the use, the enhancements and upgrades are
continuous undertaking after the initial implementation of the ERP system in order to
meet the continuous changed business requirements according to the illustrations of
78
the interviewees who were from an about-seven-year experienced in ERP post-
implementation company. This supports the imperative in filling the current gap of
the post-implementation in ERP literature.
79
8. Conclusion and Discussion
This study identified, examined and prioritised the critical success factors (CSFs) of
ERP post-implementation and further discussed the most significant CSFs for this
specific stage of the ERP lifecycle. Having this in mind, this research designed and
conducted multiple methods in order to accomplish these objectives. The conclusion
of this study is provided to sum up the findings. It was followed by the discussions
on the implications and limitations of this study, as well as some recommendations
for the future studies in this research area.
8.1 Conclusion
Through the literature review, the researcher noted that the topic of CSFs for ERP
system has been widely researched by the scholars in ERP area as the importance.
However, the focuses of these researches were mainly on the CSFs for the
implementation and the CSFs for the post-implementation was missing among the
existing literature in the ERP field. As such review led to the present study to explore
and identify the potential CSFs for this specific phase success in ERP context.
As a result, the 28 potential CSFs for ERP post-implementation were first identified
through an extensive review and empirical assessment among the literature of the
ERP and the related areas. The identified CSFs were then analysed and classified
into four main categories, namely organisation, system, personnel and vendor, along
with the related sub categories which formed the theoretical ontology of the CSFs of
ERP post-implementation.
The established ontology of CSFs for ERP exploitation as the framework was
conducted in a case study – ASE Inc. A questionnaire survey was first conducted to
examine and prioritise the factors that defined in the ontology. The findings of the
survey firstly demonstrate a fact that the respondents‟ perceptions to the all factors
given are overall affirmative. Furthermore, the results also indicate that the four
categories of the ontology are all important to the success of the ERP exploitation
and the CSFs in organisation category among the four categories are the most
important one to the ERP success in the phase. Followed by the factors in system,
80
personnel and external resource categories were perceived as the second, third and
the fourth important factors to the success of the implemented ERP system according
to the results of the survey. Apart from the four main categories, the ranking of the
28 factors were also generated and presented in quantitative data analysis chapter.
The top 11 factors in the ranking table (Table 6) were extracted as the focus to in-
depth explore why these factors were perceived as the most critical factors that
influence the success of ERP exploitation through a set of the interviews conducted
in the same case company. The results of the interviews explicitly emphasised the
importance of the 11 factors which reflect to the results of the rankings, as well as
support and complement to the justifications of these factors in the ontology chapter.
Furthermore, the results of the questionnaire and interviews indirectly but clearly
proves a fact that the successful implementation is not the destination of the ERP
journey but a new starting point which support the imperative of this study as well as
of the further studies in ERP post-implementation.
8.2 Research Implications
Overall, the results of this study have provided both theoretical and practical
implications. Firstly, the theoretical ontology of CSFs for ERP post-implementation
established by this research can contribute to the theory in this area. As seen in
existing ERP literature, prior ERP researches regarding CSFs mainly focused on the
implementation stage while this study is to date the first study that centred on the
CSFs for post-implementation stage which just bridge the gap found in this important
area. Secondly, the ontology along with the findings of this study can remind and
guide the ERP invested firms to continuously keep awareness to ensure the sustained
success of the adopted ERP system in order to really realise the full benefits from
this investment.
8.3 Research limitations
There are several limitations in this study mostly due to time and resource
restrictions. Firstly, the single-case study is arguably not as generalisable as a
multiple-case study (Yin, 2008). In this study, single case study was selected to
examine the established ontology mostly because of time restriction and the
81
difficulty in recruiting multiple cases to participate in this academic study. However,
the selected case company has been proven as a very sufficient case to this study.
Secondly, despite the study conducted a set of the interviews to obtain in-depth
understanding for the importance of the key factors, it would be better that the rest
factors were also included into the interviews as all factors were overall perceived
important to the success of the ERP exploitation, if there was sufficient time. Lastly,
this study was restricted the resources of the university in terms of the collection of
the books and electronic resources.
8.4 Recommendation for Future Research
Future studies can replicate and extend the theoretical ontology of CSFs of ERP
post-implementation developed in this study, and examine the ontology to different
sizes, countries and etc. enterprises. As the results, can prove, enhance the
completeness of ontology in any aspects, or may develop new ontology for any
specific context if the results appear differently from others.
(Word count: 22,755)
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Appendix A: Questionnaire
Dear all,
This is about the critical success factors (CSFs) of ERP (SAP system in ASE Inc.)
post-implementation survey. P.S. ERP = Enterprise Resource Planning
The purpose of this survey is to identify the CSFs of ERP post-implementation that
intend to remind and guide the ERP invested firms to continuously keep awareness
to ensure the sustained success of the adopted ERP system in order to really realise
the full benefits from this investment.
1. This survey will be collecting between 21 July and 11 August.
2. The questionnaire consists of two parts. A. the CSFs of ERP post-
implementation B. your profile
3. Your name will be made anonymous in my survey
4. This data of this survey will be only used for research purpose and will be
erased once the dissertation is completed in September 2010.
Please rank the following critical success factors according to their degree of the
importance towards a successful ERP post-implementation.
Extremely
Important
for success
(5)
Important
for
Success
(4)
Moderate
important
for success
(3)
Slightly
important
for success
(2)
Not
important
at all for
success (1)
1. Continued support by
top and senior
management
2. Sufficient consultation
and communication with
IT specialist and user
before the decision is
made by top management
3. Clear future system
83
enhancement plan
4. Efficient management
on ERP system related
project
5. Efficient
interdepartmental
communication and
collaboration
6. Efficient
communication between
business personnel and IT
experts
7. Sound user consultation
and support
8. Sufficient funds and
resources for supporting
essential activities
9. System response time
10. Current system
functions meet business
requirements
11. Sufficient system
flexibility for coping with
continuous emerging
business requirements
12. System use authority
and account control and
management
13. A sound system for
problem report,
troubleshooting, and its
control and management
84
14. Retain ERP system
related documentation and
know-how
15. Continued system
review
16. Strategy decision
about the extent of ERP
customisation
17. Sound system testing
after updating
18. Data quality
19. Personnel‟s
understanding on system
manipulation, new
business processes and
system objectives and
goal
20. Sound education and
training materials and
program
21. Quality and well-
trained user
22. In-house IT specialists
and cross-functional
personnel
23. IT specialist‟s
understanding on user‟s
business and problems
24. User‟s trust,
willingness attitude and
to the utility of the system
85
25. Qualified and
experienced consultant
support and advice
26. Sufficient support and
services from vendor
27. Use of vendor‟s
development tools
28. Vendor partnerships
Personal profile:
(1) What is your role?
IT system maintenance staff/ System user/ Operational manager
(2) Have you participated in the previous ERP implementation project?
Yes, all/ Yes, partly/ No
(3) How long have you used or maintained the ERP system in the
organisation?
Never/ Less than 3 months/ Between 3 and 12 months/ Between 1 and 2
years/ Over 2 years
86
Appendix B: Interview Guide
Interviewee
Interviewer
Time
Pre-interview
You will be asked several questions, which are not directly related to anything
sensitive. I will be using a software-voice recorder during the interview. The
recording is only accessed by myself for research purpose, and it will be erased once
the dissertation is completed in September 2010. Only your role title (Operational
manager, system user or IT specialist) will be used and your name will be made
anonymous in my dissertation. Please do share your extensive experiences and
options about the questions of the interview with me.
Interview
*Please do feel free to use any examples or experiences you had in the past to answer
the questions.
1. What is your role? Operational manager/ system user/ IT specialist
2. Why do you think that the following factors were perceived as important CSF to
the success of the ERP post-implementation? And do you have any examples to
prove the importance?
Factor 1. Continued support by top and senior management
Factor 2. Efficient interdepartmental communication and collaboration
Factor 3. Sufficient consultation and communication with IT specialist and
user before the decision is made by top management
Factor 4. Efficient communication between business personnel and IT experts
Factor 5. Data quality
Factor 6. Clear future system enhancement plan
Factor 7. Sound user consultation and support
87
Factor 8. Sound system testing after updating
Factor 9. Sufficient funds and resources for supporting essential activities
Factor 10. A sound system for problem report, troubleshooting, and its
control and management
Factor 11. IT specialist‟s understanding on user‟s business and problems
This is the end of the interview. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to
talk to you. What you have just said is very interesting and valuable to my
dissertation.
88
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