Integrating Enterprise Systems

In the last two decades many organizations installed enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems as a means to integrate their back-office operations. The need for integration, however, actually amplified with the advent of ERP. In addition to integrating ERP with legacy systems, consolidating multiple copies of ERP running in different business units posed major challenges. Moreover, recent strategic initiatives such as customer relationships management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), business to consumer (B2C), and business to business (B2B) all require a free flow of information between ERP and other enterprise systems to be successful. It is, therefore, more critical than ever to plan for and implement integration projects involving ERP properly. Hwang (2005) describes the need for integrating enterprise systems in detail. He also discusses several success factors cited in practitioner journals. Since then a handful of empirical studies have been published in the scholarly literature. This article provides a review of those studies with a special focus on the success factors. A consolidated list of success factors is developed for practitioners. Promising research directions are discussed.