Matching ERP system functionality to customer requirements

Although procuring enterprise resource planning systems from commercial suppliers is becoming increasingly popular in our industry, fitting those systems to customer requirements remains problematic. The authors propose an approach for matching ERP system functionality to customer requirements. The assumption made is that the ERP system postulates a set of requirements that are worth eliciting from the ERP documentation as abstractions of the ERP system functionality. Then, the requirements engineering process is a process that matches the ERP set of requirements against organisational requirements. Those requirements that match, perhaps after adaptation, identify the ERP system features and their adaptations, that must be included in the ERP installation. To facilitate the matching process, the ERP requirements and the organisational requirements are both expressed using the same representation system, that of a map. The paper presents the map representation system and the matching process. The process is illustrated by considering the Treasury module of SAP and its installation in the financial management of a cultural exchanges unit.