The Impact of ERP Partnership Formation Regulations on the Failure of ERP Implementations

According to statistics, majority of ERP implementations fail. Failure means either total cancellation of the project, or failure to go-live on time and/or within budget constraints. Mainstream literature focuses on different reasons for failure including poor project management, resistance to change, lack of top management support, insufficient user training, etc. In this research we focus on the impact of vendor-partner relationship on the failure of ERP implementations. Some vendors provide easy terms and conditions in order to attract new partners and develop a wider network of partners in the targeted regions. In this study, the terms and conditions of SAP for certifying partners are studies and analyzed. In addition, case studies of two SAP partners are conducted. The primary research results suggest that the easy partnership conditions set by ERP vendors are among the main contributing factors for ERP projects failure in our cases. This finding is considered novel since most of the related work attributes failures to other factors, ignoring the vendor-partner terms and conditions.