Impediments to enterprise system implementation across the system lifecycle: Understanding the role of country economic development

Abstract

This chapter’s goal is to investigate impediments to successful enterprise system (ES) implementation across the system lifecycle. Drawing from the opinions of 82 ES practitioners and building on the authors’ previous work on source problems in ES adoption, this study performs the further data analysis incorporating the ES lifecycle. The analysis employs the Cooper and Zmud’s sixstage model of IT diffusion and investigates how the difficulties change along the ES lifecycle. Our findings suggest that Adaptation phase, which is the main implementation stage, is the most challenging period of the ES adoption project. The results also indicate that problems with employees are the most significant impediments to ES adoption success. The findings imply that difficulties during later stages of the ES adoption can be minimized by an appropriate system choice, a good training schedule, and the preparation of a suitable IT infrastructure and database needed by the new system. The comparison of findings with prior literature suggests that ES adoption considerations change from system- to businessrelated issues along the level of country’s economic development.