Factors Affecting Adoption of ERP in China

This paper studies the early trends of enterprise resource planning (ERP) in China via an executive survey and subsequent statistical analysis. While ERP has been contributed to increased efficiency, increased revenue, and reduced costs, companies with horror stories about their ERP implementation are not uncommon. ERP implementation in China is so new that, except for a few large enterprises, the vast majority of Chinese enterprises are still on the sidelines weighing pros and cons. Whereas it is complex at any company, ERP implementation will be especially challenging for Chinese enterprises due to small company sizes, transitional enterprise ownership from planned to market economy, and cultural and language barriers. Thus, this research scrutinizes such ERP pre-implementation concerns as key factors affecting ERP decisions, potential benefits, major obstacles to implementation, and unsettled issues with managerial implications to Chinese enterprises and ERP vendors.