Critical human success factors for ERP projects

Abstract

Many companies invest huge amount of money on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions in order to build strong capabilities, improve their performance, improve operations and profitability, undertake better decision-making, and achieve a competitive advantage. But unfortunately every one of two companies is not satisfied with the results after implementation. The multipurpose objectives of this study can be briefly summarized as to identify the critical human success factors (CHSFs) and the success measurement factors (SMFs) for ERP projects by compiling relevant scales from the related Information Systems (IS) literature and expert opinion, after that to analyze and evaluate the impacts of these CHSFs on ERP project success by combining different project stakeholder perspectives. On the other hand there exists a high correlation between the CHSFs which bring another main objective that is to examine the relations between critical human success factors and ERP project success on a 3-staged framework built according to the project phases. Data collected online from 215 people, 28 different companies was analyzed by using descriptive, reliability and linear regression analyses to test the hypotheses and provide the findings. The findings are remodeled by using structural equation modeling (SEM) method to determine the impacts of the critical human factors on each other and on ERP project success by using partial least squares (PLS) technique. The scales found meaningful according to the reliability analyses. The effects of the CHSFs on ERP project success are analyzed one by one, which resulted as Setting Clear Goals, Objectives and Success Criterias, Presence of a Project Champion, User Training, Project Team Composition and Quality, Communications Management Quality, Scope and Change Management Quality and Vendor Quality have a positive impact on ERP Project Success and there are some significant differences between the stakeholders about the perception of these factors. Furthermore, the PLS analysis findings show that: as initial stage Presence of a Project Champion, Presence of Top Management Support and Vendor Quality have a positive impact on Setting Clear Goals, Objectives and Success Criteria‟s and Project Team Composition and Quality; at the second stage, Project Team Composition and Quality resulted as having a positive impact on Scope and Change Management Quality, Communications Management Quality and User Training while Setting Clear Goals, Objectives and Success Criteria‟s resulted as having a positive impact on Scope and Change Management Quality and User Training and a negative impact on Communications Management Quality; finally, Scope and Change Management Quality and User Training show positive impact on ERP project success while Communications Management Quality resulted negatively and there are again perceptional differences observed on project stakeholders views.