A preliminary study on the implementation of enterprise resource planning in Malaysian private higher institution-A case study

Institutions of Higher education are facing a challenging environment which demands an integration of business processes. Most institutions are facing reduced budgets, yet at the same time they have an increased need for technology and business services. They had experienced the rapid development of typical and complex technology over the past several years. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is one particular type of business technology that is rapidly catching the attention of the institutions of higher education for the administrative and academic functions. This system is complex, expensive and usually requires changes in the organizational culture in order to be implemented successfully. The complexity and comprehensiveness of ERP systems encompasses virtually every aspect of what organizations do today. ERP systems support most industries including airlines, banking, hospitality, insurance, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, utilities, public services and education. Beside its success and usefulness, the cost of implementing ERP is high. Without a solid history of successes and failures, implementers are at a disadvantage in knowing how best to implement ERP systems so that they will provide operational and strategic benefits to their owners. This makes the task of implementing these systems even more challenging. Due to these problems, this research is carried out in order to examine the applicability of ERP in a Malaysian institution of higher education and to develop an implementation framework. In this preliminary study, one institution is being taken as a case study. The needs of this institution in implementing ERP and the problems faced by the institution are being documented. As a result, the findings will be used as a ground work for more intensive study throughout Malaysian Institutions.