Understanding the ERP Post-Implementation Discourse

This paper presents the first stage of a larger research project focusing on understanding the emergence of ERP II. ERP is now being seen for what it really is: ‘a means to an end’, in that, its primary benefit is in the integrated infrastructure that it introduces and its ability to support future IS investments. The paper focuses on the changes that have been observed in the services offered by vendors and consultants in the now renamed ERP II market. Now terms like ‘ERP’ and ‘e-business’ are for the most part avoided by vendors and consultants as they are perceived to be out-of-date. For example, SAP once promoted that fact that they were ‘29 years in the business of e-business’ with ‘the best-run e-businesses run SAP’, but now their message promotes, ‘30 years in the business of helping businesses grow’ with ‘the best-run businesses run SAP’. In this paper, issues of concern with the realities of ERP post-implementation are presented through examining: benefits realisation; informational requirements; and generic to specific solutions. While we would argue that it is difficult to understand the rationale for the introduction of these ‘newer’ ERP extensions, we must acknowledge that a market has been created and that once again the ‘new-look’ ERP vendors are the dominant ERP II players. This leads us to question whether there is anything new in ERP