A Multi-Criteria Decision Making Model for ERP Selection: An Empirical case in Industrial Organizations of Iran

Recently, information systems and in particular ERP systems have been concerned with industrial organizations of Iran. For this reason, many large industrial organizations have implemented projects for ERP selection. The implementation of these projects has been challenged by problems and it has failed in some cases. The reason of this may be the particular conditions of organizations such as organizational culture, education, ERP preparation, infrastructures, management and general conditions of Iran such as sanctions, political limitations and negligence toward these criteria in ERP selection. In order to develop an ERP selection model for industrial organizations of Iran, this study reviewed the literature and used expert views and identified 49 ERP selection criteria in 5 groups, including software functionality, software quality, software developer, implementer and time and cost. The significance of the identified criteria was assessed by 83 experts using a questionnaire; 42 criteria were found to be significant. Although a number of these criteria such as motivational program, good political relations between developer and implementer country and Iran, compliance with organizational culture and knowledge as well as compliance with Iranian laws and regulations were not considered in previous studies, this study identified those criteria. Then, the identified criteria were weighted hierarchically using MCDM and pairwise comparisons by experts. The results indicated that the criteria related to software functionality including business support, flexibility and upgradability, compliance with the organization and integration were more significant than other criteria.