Successful ERP Systems: A Guide for Businesses and Executives

This book is intended to be a guide for businesses and practitioners on how to incorporate an ERP System into an organizationa task that, for most organizations, proves challenging. Each year billions of dollars are spent by organizations to implement, manage, and maintain ERP systems. Considering that most companies understand the importance of and need for these systemsand the profits that can be had by implementing themit is difficult to explain why incorporating them into an organization can be so challenging. This book represents unique combination of experiences pertaining to ERP systems, including an academic and research perspective, on the one hand, an a practitioners perspective, on the other. There are many keys to success in implementing an ERP system, including attention to detail, achieving the correct focus for a particular organization, and finding a proper balance between leanness, and top-heaviness. The book also attempts to define ERP value through delineating a litany of dos and donts. Such practical advice, coupled with academic research, statistics, and case studies, offer complementary perspectives and shed light on how, what, when, and why ERP systems and their implementations are deemed failures or successes. Most important, this book demonstrates what practitioners can do to counter any ERP failure risks.