Day 3 Articles

Articles:
A Framework for evaluating ERP Implementation choices:
This paper is about how to find a way to match the ERP system and the organization's business process by appropriately customizing the ERP system or the business process. Reasons for failures are interesting:

• spending more money on ERP than the company can afford
• being incompatible with strategic partners
• conflicting with management style and structure
• being overwhelmed by the required organizational changes to fit the system
• dealing with ever changing ERP technology and its infrastructure
  

It says that many researches show that molding the business processes instead of changing the software is easier and less costly. ERP projects are more risky than traditional projects, since ERP projects are bigger and includes many departments, business cycles and workflows. It is found that there is a positive correlation between the initial fit and the implementation success. ERP system customization tasks are configuration, bolt-ons, screen masks, extended reporting, workflow programming, user exits, ERP programming, interface development and package code modification.
Key decision in the early stages is whether to accept the assumptions about business processes built into the system. Software development life cycle methodology is a little bit different in ERP projects, since analysis and design phases should be merged in ERP implementations.
There are two types of customization: Technical and process. Technical one is making modifications one the ERP system. Moving from module customization to code customization increases the risk and cost but it may or may not increase the benefits that much.
Moreover, technical change capability and process change capability should be considered to define the customization's scope whether it is a technical modification or not.