What do we know about ERP integration?

Abstract

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have been the major interest of companies to improve the business performance with integrated business systems during the last 15 years. As demands for collaborative business through supply chain increased, so did the integration requirements for ERPs that are today connected externally with customers, suppliers and business partners and internally with continuously changing system landscape of the enterprise. We conducted a systematic mapping study to investigate how ERP integration has been studied by the academia from 1998 to 2012. Studies about technological issues are mostly dealing with systems inside a company whereas studies on methodological issues focus on the integration of the supply chain management and e-business. However, these studies are often either carried out without a rigorous empirical research method or they are based on single cases only. Quantitative methods have been mainly used to investigate quality attributes of ERPs but issues related to ERP integration in terms of a network of stakeholders in an ERP project still need more research in the future.