An exploratory study of the impacts of upgrading packaged software: a stakeholder perspective

Once an organization has adopted packaged software, upgrades to newer versions are inevitable. Anecdotal reports suggest that software upgrades are extremely costly and may not bring actual benefit to stakeholders in the organization. Because software upgrades recur periodically, it is important to understand the impacts of software upgrades on organizational stakeholders. In this study, we examine the impact of packaged software upgrades from the perspectives of IS staff and IS users. A dual case study was conducted to understand the impacts of an SAP upgrade and a Windows upgrade. Our study shows that there are two essential costs in each upgrade, the cost of implementation and the costs of users’ learning. Moreover, not all users experience positive impacts from software upgrade. Users’ experience of beneficial impact is contingent upon users’ explicit adoption of useful new features and improvement in features that users use.

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