Relevance of ERP Implementation and Critical Success Factors in SMEs of Developing Countries

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with their crucial role in generating employment and supporting trade are encountering numerous challenges. Meanwhile, towards to stay alive in a competitive edge in today’s dynamic business environment, SMEs are improving their usage of information systems (IS) and increasingly implementing of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. However, successful implementation and utilization of ERP systems requires adequate attention to a proper and comprehensive implementation framework and considering of significant critical success factors (CSFs) in implementation phases. Expert panel with ten experts and interview instrument was conducted in this research. This study aims to contribute three major goals: to find the required characteristics of SMEs' framework and then propose a conceptual framework and seek the relevance of critical success factors (CSFs) along the four phases of proposed framework for implementation of ERP systems in SMEs of developing countries. These findings aim to saturate the proposed frameworks that can help SMEs of developing countries towards improving the ERP implementation success rate. The case study in Iranian SMEs was used to validation of the final proposed framework.