Measuring enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems success from a managerial accounting perspective

Abstract

A major objective of management accounting is to support managers in decision-making by providing decision-relevant interdepartmental information. Hence, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are important for the application of management accounting techniques as they streamline the necessary information. Besides the fact that ERP systems are important, there was little research conducted which is directly concerned with concrete benefits that arise with the use of ERP systems within management accounting. This study with 94 participants contributes to this research field by examining benefits that arise with the use of ERP systems within management accounting and the characteristics that are crucial for achieving those benefits. As there was a recent wave of new ERP systems (i.e., SAP S/4HANA®), the results were clustered into organizations that are using traditional and modern ERP system where appropriate (i.e., response time). The outcomes indicate that using ERP systems within management accounting offers benefits that are positively interrelated with the extent and the satisfaction of using this information to make decisions. As a higher extent of using this information and a higher degree of satisfaction with this information is positively interrelated with organizational performance, we show that using ERP systems within management accounting helps improve organizational performance