Steps Towards the Implementation of Sustainable Enterprise Resource Planning Systems

A number of organisations are beginning to embed sustainability into the business processes in order to contribute to reducing environmental problems. They need to align the sustainability strategy with the business value chain. To achieve effective strategic alignment between sustainability and business processes, organisations require Sustainable Enterprise Resource Planning (S-ERP) systems to integrate all sustainable business activities. This integrated system helps practitioners collect, process, evaluate, and report data and information. However, the implementation of the S-ERP systems is very complex and needs an integrated approach to its implementation. The practitioners need guidelines that provide details of the process for implementing the S-ERP systems. The literature search revealed just limited guidelines that provide various steps to implement S-ERP systems. This stimulates the present study to develop S-ERP implementation guidelines using conceptual research methods. The conceptual research method involves three major steps including a collection of steps and their activities from previous studies, classification and review of the steps and activities, and the specifications of the guidelines. The analysis results reveal that the guidelines consist of three main components including implementation steps, decision-making levels, and activities. The implementation steps including initiating, planning, executing, monitoring/controlling, and closing. The level of decision-making contains strategic, tactical, and operational. The activity involves a number of action plans related to implementation steps and decision-making levels. The results of the study will enrich the growth of research in S-ERP subjects. In addition, developed guidelines should benefit practitioners in guiding them to implement the S-ERP systems in their organisations.