An Extended Framework for Comparing Expectations and Realized Benefits of Enterprise Systems Implementations

Realizing business value and identifying the benefits arising from implementations of enterprise systems remains a significant challenge for both research and practice. A review of existing work on enterprise systems benefits reveals that current frameworks pay limited attention to contextual and temporal variations, socio-technical and business change, and levels of benefit realization. This research study investigates the complex mix of expected and realized benefits specifically arising from ERP systems. The aim is to address the limitations of current frameworks and extend theoretical understandings to provide a richer picture of ERP benefits and their contextual variation. Drawing on data gathered from more than 60 case study organizations of differing size, maturity and industry sector the study adopts an iterative content analysis to empirically derive a comprehensive benefits framework. The extended classification and the methodology used to construct it are presented and discussed along with their implications for future research and practice.