Decision support system for the selection, implementation and evaluation of enterprise resource planning systems

Abstract

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an information system that manages, through integration, all aspects of a business including production planning, purchasing, manufacturing, sales, distribution and accounting. In Malaysia the local companies are being encouraged to adopt ERP through the availability of financial assistance by many governmental bodies. However, there lies an important question how ERP systems are being selected and adopted in the companies. Questions related to appropriateness of software to purchase, software suitability company, appropriate ways of implementation, decision to maintain or do away with the old system, projected ERP benefits, maintenance issues and standardization need answers and the question is where or who does the company turns to for these answers. Therefore, the intention of this research is to provide sufficient documentation that aims to reduce these uncertainties with regards to ERP project investment by providing possible answers and eventually propose a decision support system that makes ERP decision making an informed process. A survey questionnaire is used as the research methodology. The findings of the survey are deliberated and conclusions made at the end of this thesis. Case Studies were conducted as part of the research components. Four case studies were conducted on manufacturing companies that have successfully implemented their ERP based systems. The product of this research is the successful development of an informative and user friendly Decision Support System (DSS) to select and evaluate appropriate ERP software. The novel DSS design is based upon a combination of: (1) the input from the survey carried out in Chapter 3 on ERP’s critical success factors (2)the input derived from the case studies analysis on ERP’s benefits and (3) the mathematical computation technique and decision making technique that most closely deals with the complexity of IT projects. Overall, the proposed DSS which is named as SEEBAS has capabilities to assist decision makers to perform either the selection of a new ERP system and its implementation partner or evaluate the existing ERP performance so that any future action could be justified.