Why the Controversy over ROI from ERP?

what should be done to make ERP a good investment. It is very common, however, for companies to take a big leap of faith with ERP and supply chain management systems. And, unfortunately, more than 90 percent of the companies that have implemented ERP have not had a truly successful implementation the first time around. Despite the recent rash of articles about the limited returns from ERP, however, the ROI potential is there. The caveats are: • ERP must be driven by the right strategic and tactical process improvement objectives, with documented assumptions and valid ROI expectations and metrics. • The new processes and ERP must be implemented correctly and quickly to meet ROI expectations and become positively measurable. These two points may seem obvious, but ERP and supply chain management are rarely approached in this manner the first time. As a result, many problems arise during and, worse, after implementation. This usually necessitates a re-implementation effort or at least a major tune-up. Unarguably, ROI comes from process improvements ERP supports, not from new ERP software. What’s the difference? ERP software alone, no matter how good it is, makes little impact on improving business performance. If you continue to follow the same pre-ERP business processes after implementation, you can expect the same or possibly worse performance. ERP software can, however, enable and support many new processes, but not without the organization deciding what those processes are and accepting their use.