Assessing the correlation between ERP system implementation and business process maturity

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects continue to attract attention, as researchers seek to develop insights and understanding of the conditions required for successful project delivery. Having spent an entire career to-date in different ICT roles, the authors have experienced several ERP implementations. There is considerable literature on what constitutes precedent conditions for successful ERP project delivery, commonly referred to as critical success factors (CSFs) for ERP projects. Most of these factors are presented from a project-centric context, that is, they are activated at the advent of an ERP project and recede with project closure. One distinctive factor which attracts attention by its seeming absence from literature on CSFs is the level of maturity of business processes in the implementing organisation. This study takes a closer look at business process maturity as relevant and important for ERP implementation success, and compares this with other CSFs. In this paper, an integration of business process maturity models, ERP implementation stages and systems characteristics through maturity stages is presented to formulate a conceptual framework to assess the correlation of ERP project implementation against organizational business process maturity.