Change Management: The Real Struggle for ERP Systems Practices

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have become an essential information systems infrastructure for large organisations. These organisations are now looking for ways to leverage their ERP investment by introducing new functionality. However no matter how many implementations these companies have undertaken the same people issues still provide barriers. This research looks at the change management practices of Australian companies and identifies the main success factors and barriers associated with implementing change management strategies. The paper presents the results of a survey of 37 major Australian organisations that have implemented an ERP system. Many of these organisations have long histories of ERP usage and multiple ERP implementations and upgrades. The main findings indicate that the respondents considered change management crucial to successful ERP implementations, yet their organisations did not perform change management very well. The main success factor to change management was provision of adequate resources with the main barrier being lack of communication up and down the organisation.