CRITICAL ELEMENTS THAT DISCRIMINATE

BETWEEN SUCCESSFUL AND UNSUCCESSFUL

ERP IMPLEMENTATIONS IN SRI LANKA

A Paper by
Vathsala Wickramasinghe and Vathsala Gunawardena

Published in the
Emerald Journal of Enterprise Information Management

Presented by
Jason D.
INTRODUCTION

 Implementation of ERP systems is time consuming and difficult

It is vital for Organizations embarking on ERP systems to

understand the factors (Critical Elements – CEs) that conduce to
success

 Research setting is progressive and international in nature

CRITICAL ELEMENTS (CEs)

CE Factor 1 CE Factor 2 CE Factor 3

User Training and education Business plan and vision Change management program and
culture

User Involvement Top management support Effective communication

Managing user expectations Monitoring and evaluation of

performance

Interdepartmental corporation Clear roles and responsibilities

ERP teamwork and composition Appropriate business and IT legacy

systems

Software development, testing and

troubleshooting

Project Management

Project champion

BPR and customization

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND DATA ANALYSIS

 Survey research methodology used to collect 74 ERP

implementation projects in the country

 randomly selected project team member per each project

 Data analysis tools:

descriptive statistics
independent sample t-test
one way analysis of variance (ANOVA)
logistic regression
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

 Successful implementations: 42%

 Unsuccessful implementations: 58%

ERP implementation project performance significantly differs between

successful and unsuccessful implementations

 The importance given to CEs of training and education, user

involvement, managing user expectations, interdepartmental
corporation, ERP teamwork and composition, software development,
testing and troubleshooting, project management, project champion,
BPR and customization, change management program and culture and
effective communication significantly differ between successful and
unsuccessful implementations
IMPLICATIONS AND LIMITATIONS
 findings can be used:
 as a diagnostic tool in the better understanding of CEs
surrounding ERP implementations
 to analyze and assess issues in connection to ERP implementations to take
necessary corrective actions to achieve project success
 for firms implementing ERP systems to better prepare themselves for a
successful implemantation

 some limitations:
 data collected from several members of a team could have been beneficial
 the stage of the project life cycle not considered
 validity of a measure cannot be truly established on the basis of a single
cross sectional study
THANK YOU!