Examining the critical success factors in the adoption of enterprise resource planning

This paper presents a literature review of the critical success factors (CSFs) in the implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) across 10 different countries/regions. The review covers journals, conference proceedings, doctoral dissertation, and textbooks from these 10 different countries/regions. Through a review of the literature, 18 CSFs were identified, with more than 80 sub-factors, for the successful implementation of ERP. The findings of our study reveal that ‘appropriate business and IT legacy systems’, ‘business plan/vision/goals/justification’, ‘business process reengineering’, ‘change management culture and programme’, ‘communication’, ‘ERP teamwork and composition’, ‘monitoring and evaluation of performance’, ‘project champion’, ‘project management’, ‘software/system development, testing and troubleshooting’, ‘top management support’, ‘data management’, ‘ERP strategy and implementation methodology’, ‘ERP vendor’, ‘organizational characteristics’, ‘fit between ERP and business/process’, ‘national culture’ and ‘country-related functional requirement’ were the commonly extracted factors across these 10 countries/regions. In these 18 CSFs, ‘top management support’ and ‘training and education’ were the most frequently cited as the critical factors to the successful implementation of ERP systems.