A framework for addressing the organisational issues of enterprise systems implementation

Abstract Over the last 10 years many organisations have made significant investments in Enterprise-wide Systems (ES), particularly Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software packages. Whilst in most cases technical implementation is relatively successful, many of the initiatives have failed to deliver the benefits expected. Research studies have identified a wide range of factors, that can affect the success of ES implementations, and the general consensus is that organisational issues are more difficult to resolve than technical ones. This research set out to synthesise a framework, from prior research, for analysing and understanding these organisational issues and to apply and refine the framework by studying four ES initiatives in different organisational and industry contexts. The findings from the case studies suggest that the framework can help understand how different approaches to managing ES implementations both address and influence the behaviours of key interest groups and hence the achievement of the benefits expected from the investment.