An Approach to Identify Failure Factors of Enterprise Application Implementation in Indian Micro Enterprises

Enterprise Business Application or in other words ERP can be regarded as a novel business solution. Today organizations of any magnitude are implementing and some are in the process of implementing such Enterprise Information System. Implementation of Enterprise Business Application is quite difficult and complex process and has been subjected to substantial research. As cases of ERP failures have increased many researches have been carried out to identify which issues can lead to implementation successful. It has been observed while compiling the literature that majority of the previous studies and research projects have been conducted in identifying the critical success factors rather than critical failure factors. From the literature it has been observed that most of the developed countries had been reaping the benefits of enterprise application integration since long time and because of its advantages now a day developing countries too are embracing such technology integration. Developing countries which mostly tackle with unique challenges have a diverse condition from the implicit assumptions of leading countries. India being one of these countries that many of its Information Technology implementation failures take place. Micro small and medium enterprises (MSME) can be considered as vital part of the Indian economy contributing over 45% of industrial production and around 40% of the total exports. As per International Data Corporation (IDC) the awareness and the rate of adoption of ERP are highest among large organizations but it is the MSMEs that would fuel the future growth. In India there is a big market for ERP for MSMEs, given that there are over 20,000 small and mid size industries. Identifying the critical success factors of Enterprise Application implementation have been subjected to substantial in-depth research, however while going through the literature it seems as such there is no comprehensive study has taken place that identifies the critical failure factors of Enterprise Application implementation in context to Indian micro enterprises. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a study which is based on the results of a comprehensive compilation of literature and subsequent analysis of ERP implementation failure factors in context to Indian Micro, Small and Medium scale Enterprises (MSMEs). This paper attempts to empirically assess which factors are most critical in the ERP implementation process from the perspective of the Indian MSMEs.