Exploration and verification of factors in the Front-end stage of the ERP Implementation Process: Evidence from case study and survey research

ERP (enterprise resources planning) is widely used to improve business performance. This paper explores how the factors associated with the Front-end ERP Implementation Process (FEIP) affect the implementation outcome. First, based on literature review, a preliminary framework with 12 hypotheses is developed. Then Grounded Theory is applied for a case study to further extract and verify the factors and sub-factors. These factors are finally identified as strategic planning, corporate culture, user characteristics, organization-process-system maturity, external expertise engagement/support, and project preparation. Furthermore, the significance and correlation of all the factors are detected by conducting survey research with SPSS as a tool for analysis. The study shows that the framework is valid, and that among six, three factors have strong impact on the ERP implementation result, whereas others are less influential. Implication is given and limitation is indicated at the end.