Abstract

Abstract

Purpose: The delivered wisdom to date has enterprise system purchase and implementation as one of the most hazardous projects any organization can undertake. The aim was to reduce this risk by both theoretically and empirically finding those key predictors of a successful enterprise system deployment. Design/methodology/approach: A representative sample of 60 firms drawn from the Fortune 1000 that had recently (1999-2000) adopted enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems was used to test a model of adoption performance with significant results.

T his paper presents an empirical.inv.estigatio~ into whether the implementation of packaged ~nte.r prise Systems (ES) leads to panty In operational performance. Performance change and panty In operational performance are investigated in three geographically defined operating regions of a single firm. Order lead time, the elapsed time between receipt of an order and shipment to a customer, is used as a measure of operational performance. A single ES installation was deployed across all regions of the subject firm's operations.. Findings illustrate parity as an immediate consequence of ES deployment. However, differences in rates of performance improvement following deployment eventually result in significant (albeit smaller than pre-deployment) performance differences. An additional consequence of deployment seems to be an increased synchronization of performance across the formerly independent regions.