Decision Support for Handling Gaps between ERP Functionalities and Organizational Needs: A Goal Reasoning Based Approach

In the process of selecting commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) ERP systems, it is inevitable to encounter gaps between ERP software and organizational needs. Gaps occur when COTS attributes do not exactly match organizational needs, and they make organizational users and software vendors in the dilemma: whether to adapt as-is business processes or to customize software packages. A decision support method for handling gaps is proposed in this paper. Firstly, organizational goal-process models are built as the base for decision making. Secondly, the idea of evidence theory is introduced into goal reasoning and a quantified algorithm is proposed to evaluate the impacts of different business processes on high level goals which are critical to make decision. At last, the risk is discussed to rank intervals which specify the expected utilization of business processes.