A taxonomy of ERP implementation approaches

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are enterprise wide systems which, because of their integration, automate all of a company´s business processes. They have rapidly become the de facto industry standard for replacement of legacy systems. Because there is evidence that the overwhelming majority of ERP implementations exceed their budget and their time allocations, researchers have begun to analyse ERP implementation in case studies in order to provide an implementation framework which maximises efficiencies. We argue that the concept of an ERP implementation is not a generic concept, and we present a taxonomy of ERP implementation categories. The evidence for the taxonomy is drawn from previous studies and from a series of structured interviews with practitioners who are expert in ERP implementation. We further argue that understanding the differences between these categories is crucial if researchers are to do case study research of ERP implementation; otherwise, comparisons are being made between ERP implementation projects which are essentially incommensurate. Conclusions based on incommensurate cases are inherently invalid. The taxonomy of implementation categories is also presented as a tool for implementation managers to delineate the scope of an ERP implementation project prior to in depth specification of the project processes.