Reforming Public Healthcare in the Republic of Ireland with Information Systems: A Comparative Study with the Private Sector

The need for reforming public healthcare towards greater efficiency and measurable returns on investment has been felt by governments in many countries. In Ireland, this led to the PPARS project, which sought to implement SAP across all public healthcare sites. This project, however, was unsuccessful and led to a parliamentary inquiry. To understand why the PPARS project failed, we carried out an extensive case study of the project and compared our findings to the implementation of JD Edwards in a multinational in the private sector. Our study reveals that despite specific circumstances in the public sector that contributed to the failure of the ERP project, the primary causes of failure result from a lack of understanding of what ERP involves and a failure to prepare adequately, which can be found in any organisation, public or private. This leads to significant lessons for ERP implementations and IS projects involving substantial change.