Drivers, barriers and critical success factors for ERPII implementation in supply chains: A critical analysis

This paper reviews existing literature to determine the drivers of and barriers to Enterprise Resource Planning II (ERPII) implementation. The ERPII literature is then extended through interviews with potential players in ERPII implementations to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) or preconditions required for successful implementation throughout supply chains. These interviews were conducted with leading ERP vendors/consultants and organisations involved in the entire supply chain to gather evidence on the success, or lack thereof, of ERPII implementations. The results were compared and contrasted to existing literature on ERPII, collaborative networks, and the extended enterprise. We found more barriers to than drivers of successful ERPII implementation. This leads prospective implementers to have a pessimistic forecast for ERPII implementation success. Our research reveals that main reason for this negativity is a general lack of understanding and appreciation of the capabilities of the extended enterprise network. Second, the research presents two sets of CSFs: CSFs which apply to traditional ERP and carry forward to apply to ERPII, and CSFs that are tailored to the new needs for successful ERPII implementations. Finally, the research questions the suitability of ERPII in today’s modern business environment, and suggests that technology may have overtaken management’s capabilities to capture the full benefits of such an advanced enterprise system. Future trends in ERPII development are also considered in an attempt to find the next phase in the enterprise system life cycle. Beyond ERPII, the research suggests that infrastructure such as large-scale business intelligence (BI) systems must be heavily incorporated into modern enterprise systems to fully understand how information flows throughout an organisation and to make sense of that information.