Enterprise resource planning: Developments and directions for operations management research

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has come to mean many things over the last several decades. Divergent applications by practitioners and academics, as well as by researchers in alternative fields of study, has allowed for both considerable proliferation of information on the topic but also for a considerable amount of confusion regarding the meaning of the term. In reviewing ERP research two distinct research streams emerge. The first focuses on the fundamental corporate capabilities driving ERP as a strategic concept. A second stream focuses on the details associated with implementing information systems and their relative success and cost. This paper briefly discusses these research streams and suggests some ideas for related future research. Published in the European Journal of Operational Research 146(2), 2003