ERP Post-Implementation Issues in SMEs in
Pakistan: An Empirical Study
Muhammad Imran
Abstract—An ERP deployment does not always
guarantee perfect enough working. ERP Post-
Implementation issues are a bit of loose cannon.
Sometimes software projects are technical success but
business failure. There is a lot of research on successful
deployment but not enough on ERP Post-
implementation issues, particularly in Pakistan. I
conducted an empirical study to find out such issues. The
study was conducted on three organizations of small and
medium level in Pakistan. I tried to find out the issues by
conducting interviews, collecting data and validating it
from project manager. This Data was processed by
qualitative analysis to deduce results. Finally, I
interviewed Domain Experts, IT professionals and
consultants to cogitate and provide guideline to minimize
such issues.
Index Terms—ERP post-implementation issues, ERP post
deployment, determinants of successful ERP deployment, ERP
Post-implementation success factors
I. INTRODUCTION
This research focuses on the post-implementation
issues in SMEs in Pakistan. An ERP is a software
system to support and integrate almost every
functional area of a business process such as
procurement of goods and services, sale and
distribution, finance, accountings, human resource,
manufacturing, production planning, logistics &
warehouse management [1]. ERP system has been one
of the most popular business management systems,
providing benefits of real-time capabilities and one-
piece communication for business in organizations.
However, all ERP implementations are not successful
[2]. There are many researches on the implementation
facilitation and barriers in all types of organizations
throughout the world but limited literature can be
found for work specific to Pakistan on Post-
implementation issues in small and medium level
enterprises [3].
It is observed that all seems perfect till go-live ,
however real story starts when deployment vendors
leave the organization, in house resources are not
available and user are exposed to a new system with
tailored processes.
ERP deployment is disreputable not only as high-
risk and exclusive investments but also for having
failure costs that significantly surpass the software
cost [4]. So this was a motivation to conduct a study
about the ERP post-implementation issues in Pakistan.
Pakistani industry is different from other world by
many perspectives. Either it is matter of localization or
taxation; it varies from startup to large Enterprises.
When an enterprise meets the milestone of GO-LIVE
in ERP deployment process, it usually faces “after-
effects” or in other words, it usually doesn’t work
perfectly. Reason is the issues that emerged after the
deployment of an ERP system.
I conducted an empirical-study to determine the
Post-Implementation issues. I collected data from
support-desk of SAP vendor for three organizations. It
includes queries of first six months from date of GO-
LIVE. I performed qualitative analysis to determine
types of issues being reported from organizations after
ERP deployment. These results were verified from
project managers on client side using questionnaire.
Finally, I conducted interviews with IT
professionals, domains experts and consultant to
devise a guideline on each category of issues. These
suggestions don’t ensure a business success but a way
to minimize post-implementation issues, thus
increasing likelihood of realizing business value from
the ERP. The success can’t be guaranteed due to the
fact that issues addressed in this study are ones those
occur frequently. Besides this, every business has its
own business policies those have probable impacts on
issues occurring.
II. RELATED WORK
The prior work upon the ERP post-
implementation issues in SMEs is not widely
available. The research targeting concretely the ERP
post-implementation issues is very limited particularly
on industry in Pakistan. A few of research found from
the available literature but it doesn’t focus on post-
implementation issues and solution for it. My study is
aimed to find out such issues and course of action to
prevent from it.
An Empirical study on finding the post-
implementation issues conducted by Guo Chao Peng
and Miguel Baptista concludes that most of the ERP
post-implementation problems identified are
organizational and management problems (e.g. lack of
tangible support from top management, IT manager
lacks power and ERP knowledge), which in turn can
result in critical system issues [6]. But it doesn’t
suggest any solution for prevention from ERP issues.
According to R. Appuswamy, the process of the
implementation of ERP solutions requires a diverse set
of techniques as compared to traditional IT software
projects [7]. Appuswamy’s research covers bit of ERP
related issues. He disclosed the findings of his
empirical study and suggested some SOPs to
implement an ERP system successfully with the
support of factors like vendor’s support. Since, there
is no framework available to handle the change
management and human side of implementation
process, so it often yields results in form of ERP
Project being out of control that leads to post-
implementation issues. Still no suggestions for how to
develop a strategy for post-implementation issues
escape.
A research conducted by Ben Moussa Nejib
(Department of Management, FSEG Tunis - BUR 14
Campus University) is a worthy contribution towards
solution development for ERP post-implementation
issues [8]. Researcher conducted an empirical-study to
find out determinants of Post Implementation Success.
In his research, he figured out the factors having
critical role for future concerns of ERP system
working.
Even though, Ben Moussa’s contribution is worthy but
his study includes only Tunisian organizations. So, his
determinants for ERP Success may not be applicable
in Pakistani Organizations. Reason is variant business
logics and other factors like taxation policies etc.
A Research conducted by Muhammad Yousaf Jamil
is focusing Pakistani Enterprises [9], however it
focuses critical success factors and challenges in
general.
III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
I have selected three organizations from SME
sector of Pakistan. These three organizations are
ShopPro, AZM Enterprises and Sensum University of
Management Sciences. Two of them are of Retail &
Manufacturing industry and one is an educational
institute. A renowned ERP “SAP” is deployed in these
organizations and my study revolves around it.
I collected data about the problems from the ERP
Vendor‘s helpdesk. ERP Vendor’s helpdesk is a portal
where end-users can submit their queries regarding
issues occur during the working of the system. Data
collected from the helpdesk was validated by the
questionnaire conducted for Project Managers at
client-side. Project Managers were asked to select
occurrence of a type of issue from a six-point grading
scale. To analyze the data, I used the grounded-theory
method. A well-established qualitative research
method [5][10]. It lets you develop insights about a
problem under investigation, without prior
hypotheses. This approach is exploratory rather than
confirmatory.
These issues are a mix of different queries about
almost every module of the ERP. These modules
include user understanding, custom development and
ERP configurations issues etc.
TABLE I is an illustration for organizations
selected the empirical-study.
TABLE I.
ORGANIZATIONS FOR RESEARCH
Organization Industry Participant(s) ERP
Name
ShopPro Retail& 3 SAP
Manufacturing
AZM Beverage 3 SAP
Enterprises Industry
SUMS Education 3 SAP
Industry
A. QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF DATA
 Data acquired from the vendor’s helpdesk was in
subjective form; so I performed some operations to get
it in process-able form according to types of issues. A
qualitative analysis was made using standard
techniques i.e. open coding, axial coding and selective
coding.
During the Open coding phase, data was read several
times to create tentative labels (open codes) for the
chunk of the data that summarized what it depicts.
Open codes were generated for different types of
issues and categorized according to their properties
and details. Illustration of open code for data is shown
in TABLE I .

TABLE II.
OPEN CODES FOR ERP POST-IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

Id Open codes Category Domain Properties

1 Controlling issues Control of process Retail & Manufacture Training Attendance Report, Addition of wage type
and data in case of Industry/Education in salary slip, Addition of wage type in salary detail
other than routine industry/Beverages Industry sheet Master Data Report
process
2 Custom Development ABAP Development Retail & Manufacture Issue in salary slip, FBCJ document header is missing
issues Industry/Education in printout, problem with sales upload, tax
industry/Beverages Industry calculation is inaccurate, withholding tax is not
applying as intended, Addition of wage type in salary
detail sheet, ZDPVT issue
3 Configurations issues SAP Basis Retail & Manufacture FI authorize all FI user to T-Code FB00, ADD FBS1
Industry/Education to Role Z_FI_ALL_ 1000_HOD, Z_FI_ALL_
industry/Beverages Industry 2000_HOD, Password reset of user FI_SAFDA,
Authorization for ZFMDERIVER on PRDR.
4 System Changes SAP Change Retail & Manufacture PRD Server Space Increase, Single Print for multiple
Requests (CRs) Industry/Education delivery ord, Create New Division and Order Type,
industry/Beverages Industry Block Back Date PGI and Invoicing, Report # 8
Distt.wise sale summary
5 Process Integration General Retail & Manufacture Inter-related components of ERP system. Work fine
Industry/Education during demo session, fails in live environment.
industry/Beverages Industry

6 User Understanding SAP Trainings Retail & Manufacture User understanding of system, modules
Industry/Education industry

These are a few examples of open codes that were
generated for the data. However, qualitative research
was made on the whole available data.
Open codes for the data are keen by access
perspective. Each Open code represents a chunk of
data. ‘Chunk of Data’ can be considered as the group
of queries those are alike in nature. Type-wise user
queries received from different organizations
(ShopPro, SUMS etc.) are a mix of data queries. So,
one open code is for the issues of same nature,
similarly next open code is for another type of issues
and so on so forth. By a technical aspect, each open
code has a category or relate to a system domain.
Open code ‘User Understanding’ has a category ‘SAP
Trainings’. Similarly, open ‘Custom Development
issues’ falls in ‘ABAP Development’ category.
Domain of the open code represents the organization
domain where it is received from It summarizes what
the open code’s covers from system.
B. AXIAL CODES AND SELECTIVE CODE
BASED ON THE OPEN CODES
 Axial codes and selective codes were
deduced from the open codes discussed in ‘Open
Coding’ phase. Here is an illustration in TABLEIII

TABLE III
AXIAL AND SELECTIVE CODING
Open codes Axial Codes Selective Code
Controlling issues Reversal of executed cycles, Needs more attention to detail and requirement
Change profit center assigned to cost centers, engineering. If tackled in start of the project, it will
Reservation creation issue against only one cost minimize post implementation issues. Frequency of the
center, Distribution Cycles effecting Budget Reports issue occurrence is a sufficiently descriptive about the post-
implementation issues.

Custom Mostly occur due to get a piece of software for a

Development issues particular business logic

Configurations issues Two types of issues. Configuration required by

business and technical perspective of configurations
System Changes Seems like it never ends. With the passage of time and
business size, it is always called again and again
Process Integration Critical by business perspective. Once in demo
session, a process works fine, but after go-live
execution on huge basis will generate such errors.
user understanding Insufficient training and non-competitive users

The open codes for each issue have its native suggested for the Project Manager from each
axial code that leads to selective code. Once done with organization.
this, frequency of occurrence for each type of issues
was computed. This is shown in Table Date validation phase is consists of structured-
questionnaire. Intend to design structured
TABLE IV. questionnaires was to get participants express their
Frequency of Issue occurrence in organizations views about ERP post-implementation issues
ShopPro AZM Sensum concisely. Before asking the subjects to fill the
Enterprise University questionnaire, they were briefed about categorization
Controlling 6 3 4
of the issues based on characteristics defined in Open
Custom 104 24 143
Development coding. This was to help them so that they can better
Configurations 62 92 0 understand where to place issue, as per its
System 9 90 16 characteristics. In first section, participants were asked
Changes to speak up about their experience with post-
Process 105 129 17 implementation issues. In second section, a
Integration
user’s 128 95 12 questionnaire containing a few of predefined questions
understanding was given to participants about issues. My strategy
towards synthesizing the solution guideline for issues
works parallels to above data collecting schemes. I
C. DATA VALIDATION developed a six-point scale to measure the frequency
of the issues and assigning them a degree of
Data validation was ought to be done to
occurrence. This is strategy to determine the post-
expand the research criteria and get sufficient evidence
implementation issues occur frequently. TABLE VI is
to support my synthesis. It is achieved by the support
an explanation for the scale.
of questionnaire conducted within the targeted
organizations. These questionnaires have been
 I calculated the average frequency of issues with the
values obtained from questionnaire and the helpdesk
data.

TABLE V. For the questions provided in Section II of

SCALE FOR ISSUEs RANKING questionnaire, participants had to choose the level
Questionnaire Helpdesk Rank (degree) of occurrence of an issue.
feedback frequencies
Open questions’ statements for questionnaire are
0 0 0
given as:
1 1-30 1
2 31-60 2
 What is impact on business processes after
3 61-90 3
ERP deployment?
4 91-120 4
 In which area of the ERP you are having
5 121-150 5 tough time?

TABLE VI.
Questionnaire Format for Degree of occurrences by Participants
Issue type Never Very Rarely Rarely Occasionally Frequently Very Frequently

Controlling 0 1 2 3 4 5

Custom Development 0 1 2 3 4 5
Configurations 0 1 2 3 4 5

System Changes 0 1 2 3 4 5

Process Integration 0 1 2 3 4 5

user understanding 0 1 2 3 4 5

frequencies’. TABLE VII is an illustration for the

. ASSIGNING THE RANK TO ISSUES WITH THEIR
OCCURRENCE BY TAKING AVERAGE
I calculated average of both of degrees i.e.
‘Questionnaire feedback’ and ‘Helpdesk data
deductions made from the degree of occurrences of
issues by questionnaire results and helpdesk score by
following the six-point scale mentioned in TABLE V.
Avg column shows the average of degree of issue
occurrences calculated from Questionnaire results and
HelpDesk frequencies.
 TABLE VII.
RANKING OF ISSUES
Score
ShopPro AZM Ent. Sensum Uni
Q Helpdesk Avg Q Helpdesk Avg Q Helpdesk Avg
Controlling 3 1 2 3 1 2 2 1 1.5
Custom Development 4 4 4 4 1 2.5 4 5 5

Configurations 2 3 2.5 3 4 3.5 1 0 0.5

System Changes 3 1 2 2 3 2.5 4 1 2.5

Process Integration 4 4 4 5 5 5 0 1 0.5

user understanding 5 5 5 4 4 4 2 1 1.5

position that means, these issues are occur for many

times after the ‘Customer Development’ issues. Again
this is a hypothetical result due to limitations in
IV. FINDINGS OF QUALITATIVE qualitative research of data.
RESEARCH
After finding the results from the qualitative research
The qualitative research produced some results. I on data, I conducted interviews with IT Professionals
analyzed data results and came to know that the issues and domain experts to know about their opinions to
with high average frequency are the ones those mostly prevent from post-implementation issues we face in
occur in organizations after the ERP system organizations. The interviews are semi-structured.
deployment. TABLE VIII shows the results for There are two sections for each interview session. In
occurrences of issues. first section, participants were free to speak up about
the ERP post-implementation issues; while in second
TABLE VIII.
section; a few structured questions were asked about
RANKS OF ISSUES TYPES WITH
the known issues used in qualitative research. TABLE
OCCURRANCE
IX. is about the participants of interviews.
Issue category Rank
Custom Development 3.8 TABLE IX.
User understanding 3.5
Process Integration
PARTICIPANTS OF INTERVIEWS
3.1
System Changes Name Designation Domain Organization
2.3
ABC SAP Project ERP SolutionIn
Configurations 2 Manager Deployment
Controlling 1.8 DEF Program Management TechHut
Manager
GHI Functional General Datatex
RESULT AND CONTRIBUTION Consultant Consultancy

Issues with highest occurrences are kept on top and

preceded by descending order. According to TABLE Structured questions for interviews:
VIII, ‘Customer Development’ issues have highest
i. What you suggest for the ‘Controlling
rank of 3.8. I.e. these issue occur most of the time.
issues’ after ERP implementation?
Similarly, ‘User understanding’ category falls on 2 nd
 ii. What is the solution for ‘Custom
Development issues’?
iii. How to escape from ‘Configuration
issues?
iv. What is the way to prevent or
minimizing ‘System Changes issues’?
v. How ‘Process Integration issues’ can be
minimized after ERP go-live?
vi. What is strategy to avoid ‘user
understanding’ issues?
Participants devised some suggestions for questions
related to issues in the light of their experiences. A
concise summary for each type of issue is given
according to expert opinions.
Controlling Issues: ERP Controlling is something
related to getting control over process flow. Usually,
when ERP deployment is not well-engineered; can
yields controlling issues not accommodating business
policies; for example, reversal of documents or rolling
back a process etc. These issues can be tackled by
building an optimized plan for ERP deployment and
process flows. The business stakeholders must have to
come to an agreement for minimizing such issues.
Business has to follow software, not software to follow
business.
Custom Development: Custom Development means if
a business requires an ERP module working other than
the standard SOP. For example, a custom developed
program for Human Capital Management system that
manages the staff shifting, deductions on late arrivals
or employee’s personal loan management. Again, it
must be clear in requirement gathering and must be
follow the standard way as much as possible. Custom
developed programs are good for getting things in
work but they are not optimum solution, hence can
produce complexities. A better way to prevent from
such issues can be found in altering the business
policies up to possible extent.
Configuration Issues: These are the most common
issues a business faces after the ERP go-live. An ERP
system in organization is used by multi users and in
some cases; users can be hundreds or even thousands.
ERP System is ought to be configured for all users
working on it. Configuration requests are quite
frequent and never stop until System gets matured in
organization. Proper resources are required to
overcome such issues. All necessary requests must be
accommodated and all unnecessary requests must be
managed to minimize the occurrences of configuration
issues.
System Changes: Such issues are critical ones. ERP
Systems are cost and time worthy. Like traditional
software approaches, changes in systems sometime
require plenty of costs. A very concise plan must be
built in early phases of deployment. Well understood
requirements and documentation will help to escape
from such issues.
Process Integration: ERP vendors offer modules and
related applications that can interoperate. The demo
sessions work fine but when they go-live, issues occur.
Live working involves whole company’s data and
processes. Integration issues occur at this point. To
tackle such problem, vendor has to achieve prefect
enough working of ERP’s each module in demo
sessions. ERP project stakeholders of the organization
are responsible to validate the ERP working in demo
session. They should generate questions and provide
different test scenarios for plenty of testing.
User Understanding: According to my findings, issues
of user understanding are ones occur most of the time
after ERP implementation. It has to be given
importance because after system go-live, end-users
have to work on it. If they are not clear about the
processes and working of the system, ERP can’t be
utilizing up to some real extent. Usually after
deployment vendor’s return back and if it doesn’t
provide post-implementation support, processes are
affected seriously. Either vendor has to provide
enough of support even after go-live or plan can be
optimized for issues escape. So, in user training
session, it is necessary to get enough of training and
clear all ambiguities and test scenarios. Another
suggestion is to conduct a module test session for user
to validate their performance and level of
understanding.
V. CONCLUSION
The aim of my study was to identify the ERP post-
implementation issues generally occur and become a
hassle. Software Projects are successful technically
but failure by business perspective. The reason is
plenty of issues occur after the go-live milestone of
ERP System. In order to determine such issues which,
data was collected for three organizations using
helpdesk postal of an ERP support vendor. I made a
qualitative research on data collected and categorized
issues. For each issue type, validation was obtained
through questionnaire and I developed it in systematic
way for analysis. The analysis yields some results that
list up issue categories according to their frequencies
of occurrence. To suggest solution for known ERP
post-implementation issues types, I conducted
interviews with IT professional and domain experts.
The results of interviews are recommended as solution
for ERP post-implementation issues but this is just a
guideline which might help to prevent issues however
not a remedy to ensure a certain success.
VI. THREATS TO VALIDITY
I devised some results from my research about the
post-implementation issues. But it can be falsified due
to limitations or threats to validity. In future works, I
can improve the results by validation. A few of threats
to validity are given as:
i. Data was collected directly from
vendor’s helpdesk not from the
organizations. The may be
vulnerable for result accuracy.
ii. Data has been analyzed for SAP
only, there are chances that certain
issue might be specific to the ERP.
iii. Issues were sorted out only on the
basis of their frequency. It doesn’t
include all possible issue like
performance measures or severity of
issues.
iv. Interview results from IT
professionals are not analyzed but
guideline is provided through
subjective analysis.
v. From client side, only one subject
(Project manager) has been
questioned, there might be issue
with the understanding of the
subject about complex domain
issues.
VII. FUTURE WORK
I am interested to expand the scope by adding
other renowned ERPs especially Oracle and
Microsoft Dynamics. In this research data was
collected from a major support vendor , however
data should be collected directly from the
organizations. Post-implementations issues are
categorized on frequency of the occurrence;
however this might not help business, as each
issue should be categorized considering its
severity, value for the business and cost
associated. Guideline to better handle these issues
should be provided by asking concerned person
i.e. a professional more related to type of the
issues. Also, need to practice these guidelines on
a newly deployed project to realize real
contribution of the research.
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In Large Organizations: Similarities and Differences Between
Corporate and University Environment”, Submitted to the MIT
Sloan School of Management on May 10, 2013
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IMPLEMENTATION IN PAKISTANI ENTERPRISES:
CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS AND CHALLENGES, Journal
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http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-72/007%20Appuswamy%20ERP.pdf
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