Feedback in the ERP Value-Chain: What Influence Has Thoughts about Competitive Advantage

Different opinions about whether an organization gains a competitive advantage (CA) from an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system exist. However, this paper describes another angle of the much reported competitive advantage discussion. The basic question in the paper concerns how thoughts about receiving competitive advantage from customizing ERPs influences feedback in ERP development. ERP development is described as having three stakeholders: an ERP vendor, an ERP partner or re-seller, and the ERP end-user or client. The question asked is: What influence has thoughts about receiving competitive advantage on the feedback related to requirements in ERP development? From a set of theoretical propositions eight scenarios are proposed. These scenarios are then illustrated from interviews with stakeholders in ERP development. From an initial research, evidence for six of these eight scenarios was uncovered. The main conclusion is that thoughts about competitive advantage seem to influence the feedback, but not really in the way that was initial assumed. Instead of, as was assumed, having a restrict view of providing feedback stakeholders seems to be more interested in having a working feedback loop in the ERP value-chain making the parties in a specific value-chain more interested in competing with other parties in other ERP valuechains.