Transplanting the best practice for implementation of an ERP system: A structured inductive study of an international company

Abstract

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have the potential to integrate seamlessly organizational processes using common shared information and data flows. The implementation of ERP systems involves sophisticated business processes integration and conflicts between different departments of the organization. Furthermore, it also costs organizations a huge amount of money and manpower. Therefore, even major ERP vendors cannot guarantee the success of implementation. Consequently, how to implement ERP systems successfully in an effective and efficient manner is an imperative issue in the field of enterprise information systems. Major ERP package vendors have recently used the concept of Best Practice (BP), which is related to transfer the past successful experience to the new ERP projects, to make the implementation effective and efficient. In this paper, we investigate the influences of the BP through a structured inductive study of an international conglomerate by examining their successful implementation of ERP projects. It is not surprising that the results of this study indicate that transplanting BP from the parent company to subsidiaries indeed plays a key role on the implementation of ERP systems. The results also reveal that successful transplanting of BP has positive impacts on the success in ERP implication, through reducing the cultural discrepancies, boosting project efficiency, and empowering coordination of systems integration.