Challenges on a global implementation of ERP software

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software packages, originally developed in one country addressing unique requirements of the businesses in that country, have matured significantly. In the new global economy this software is implemented in global corporations and used in multiple countries from one installation in a shared mode. Most of these corporations are implementing with out any customization or with minimal customization to avoid high maintenance costs and other reasons. Project managers of these implementations in a global environment face some unique uncertainties and challenges different from any custom software development and implementation projects which was part of the old economy. Some of the unique challenges are satisfying multiple countries´ statutory requirements and reporting to the corporate headquarters from one installation of the software, conflicting interests between different business entities, lack of experienced implementators in all the countries, and efficient use of metanational advantages. We discuss different aspects of these challenges in detail and point out that ERP software can provide only one solution for a particular business process unless workarounds are available from experienced implementators. Different counties adopt different reporting and accounting practices and therefore an ERP implementation cannot solve all problems that a global corporation may have in multiple countries in the scope of the project due to the absence of standard global processes across the organization. We conclude that the most important critical success factor of these international implementations are how quickly these corporations can reengineer existing business process to adopt best practices of using an ERP system.