Justifying an ERP Investment with the Promise of Realising Business Benefits

Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP) projects often lead to disappointing outcomes, even downright failures, which is not in keeping with the vast investments they represent. Many explanations have been provided, but it seems to be difficult to move beyond the specificities of each case study of failure. In any case, the publication of long lists of CSFs for ERP implementations has failed to make any impact on the difficulties faced by organisations. In this paper, we propose that it is the mismatch between the very ambitious goals of firms and the means they apply that is the primary cause of their failure to obtain benefits from their ERP projects. In particular, seeking strategic benefits and treating the ERP project as a technical venture is bound to fail. Using four case studies of typical ERP implementations, we seek to explain why firms continue to struggle with integrated systems despite their best intentions and efforts.