ERP II: The involvement, benefits and impediments of collaborative information sharing

(ERP) II is a way of managing information and designing work processes to facilitate all of this. In sounding as profound as the concept does, it also raises a number of questions. This research seeks to establish a set of clear business benefits and impediments, hindrances to success. It initially builds this set through an extension of pertinent literature on ERP (as ERP is retained at the heart of ERP II) and through logical deduction (cause and effect) of the current (anecdotal) literature on ERP II. It then tests these sets, through an online survey, with select industry experts on ERP who are anticipated to be amongst the first to move to ERP II. The survey also gives these respondents an opportunity to add their 'free' thoughts to construct the ERP II involvement further. Part of this research also deals in formalising the collaborative structures suitable for ERP II. The research finds that most existing benefits/impediments of ERP can still be carried forward besides 'new' ones built through logical deduction. The research further finds a number of future research objectives that spawn from the respondents' concerns. Finally, it identifies three collaborative structures suitable to aid information exchange in a real-time collaborative scenario, namely joint ventures, networks and Japanese-style 'purchasing partnership'.