Risks in ERP Project – Case Study of IS/ICT Management Capability Maturity Level and Risk Assessment

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects are considered to be expensive, time-consuming, difficult to manage, and extremely risky. ERP projects are risky from the strategic, operational, technical and organisational perspectives. The risks and critical success factors of ERP projects have been widely studied, and the management of risks is crucial to a successful ERP project. Generic risk analyses have faced inflation, and in the worst case companies do not manage risks in their ERP projects at all. This paper presents the early stage assessment of ERP project risks in three firms’ ERP projects. The focus is on company-specific risk identification. Companies of this study have limited maturity in IS/ICT management capabilities. Understanding of capability maturity level is useful to efficient risk management in an ERP project. In this paper we compare the company-specific risks to common risk list found in the literature. Qualitative case study of three firms provides empirical evidence of uncovered ERP risks if only common risk list is used. As a result we claim that in addition to generic project management risks there is also a need to assess company-specific-risks. In fact, company-specific risks are usually critical to company’s ERP project success.