Introducing FERPS: A framework for Enterprise Resource Planning selection

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, over the years, have evolved into integral business systems in both medium and large organizations. The strength of an ERP is that it is a computerized transactional information system, with a centralized data repository. This allows for significant data availability and seamless collaboration between business functions. Realizing associated benefits through an ERP implementation is challenging, as experienced by a South African water utility. On the establishment of the utility the failure to implement an ERP system successfully, forced the organization to critically review the position it found itself in. This study identifies some of the critical shortfalls in the initial ERP implementation, and introduces the process of the creation of an ERP evaluation framework, named FERPS, that assists in ERP evaluation and selection, prior to acquisition. Ultimately, FERPS assists in providing an organization with evaluation results of ERP systems to support the implementation of an optimal ERP system, based on organizational fit.