A framework for impact analysis of post-implementation enterprise resource planning modifications

Competitive environments cause an inevitable change in business requirements, which encourages postimplementation modifications of ERP systems. Understanding and managing the impact of these changes on implemented ERP systems is a challenging task for most enterprises. Change impact analysis is a strategic approach to analyzing modifications in large and complex software systems, such as ERP. In this paper, we present an impact analysis framework for ERP post-implementation modifications. Our framework builds an analogy with Engineering Change Requests in product lifecycle management. It defines a conceptual model of ERP system entities and their dependencies to support change specification, a set of mechanisms to evaluate the impact of modifications, and an analysis of strategies to implement the change. Our method serves as an aid to business analysts and practitioners to assess the feasibility and impact of post-implementation requirements in ERP systems.