Understanding the Organisational Impact of ERP: A Case Study in Manufacturing

An underestimated aspect of the study of ERP implementations is the longer term impact of these highly integrated applications on the way that managers work. This paper reports on the changes to managerial decision processes arising from an ERP implementation four years prior to the study. Using the managers’ own description of their goals as a lens, the objective was to gain an understanding of the impact of enterprise integration on the capability of the firm. We found that the ERP system has helped the support functions of the organisation (Finance, Quality and IS) by standardising transaction processes and thereby increasing their administrative grasp of the firm’s activities (visibility and control). The benefits for managers responsible for the demand and supply cycles are, however, scarce. Furthermore, in a dynamic business environment where processes require constant tweaking to keep abreast of changes in market conditions, highly structuring technologies such as ERP can rapidly go out of kilter with the reality of doing business, and eventually hinder the flow of basic performance information. Managers lose out on the efficiency of integration promised by ERP because of latency in the access to key operational data.