Enterprise resource planning: a business approach to systems development

Systems development methodologies have evolved from technical approaches through to a people/organisational focus and more recently an increased emphasis on business process reengineering (BPR) has been witnessed. This evolution reflects both the increasing maturity of information technology and also the business outlook of firms seeking to use IT for competitive advantage. In this paper we argue that system development is now entering a new phase of maturity with the advent of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software packages. ERP systems are integrated, enterprise wide systems which automate core corporate activities such as manufacturing, human resource, finance and supply chain management. From case study research, it is shown that ERP implementations have different types of problems compared with traditional software development methods. These centre on the alignment of business processes with the standard Software package and the project management of the implementation process. It is argued that ERP is a departure from traditional approaches to system development. It therefore requires a different approach that places less emphasis on the technical aspects of software development and instead seeks to balance the business process design, software configuration and project management aspects of IT implementation with the overall strategy and structure of the firm. Future research opportunities are outlined.