Development of guidelines for the implementation of sustainable enterprise resource planning systems

Abstract Sustainable Enterprise Resource Planning is an enterprise system that incorporates essential entities of the corporate sustainable value chain into a centralised system. It is a massive information system, and its deployment requires a considerable investment of money and time. Unwell plan, limited resources, and weak commitment can lead to the failure of system implementation. Few studies have discussed the concept of Sustainable Enterprise Resource Planning systems. However, little research has focused on the implementation aspect of the system, especially on proposing a general plan that can guide practitioners to implement the Sustainable Enterprise Resource Planning systems. To address this gap, this study aimed to develop comprehensive guidelines that provide steps and activities for implementing the system. The guidelines are developed using a conceptual research method that relies on the examination of literature to find and integrate various concepts, including sustainability aspects, project management, organisational decision levels, and stratc management. The method envelopes three phases: (i) Collection of steps and activities from the existing sustainability and ERP guidelines, (ii) Classification and evaluation of the identified steps and activities, and (iii) Identification of steps and activities required for the guidelines. The proposed guidelines entail three main modules comprising implementation steps, levels, and activities. The results would be useful for practitioners in giving a formal direction to efficiently implement Sustainable Enterprise Resource Planning systems in their corporate value chains.