SaaS ERP Adoption Intent: Explaining the South African SME Perspective

Abstract

Abstract. This interpretive research study explores intention to adopt SaaS ERP software within South African SMEs. Semi-structured interviews with participants from different industry sectors were performed and seven multidimensional factors emerged explaining the current reluctance to adoption. While, improved IT reliability and perceived cost reduction were seem as benefits they were dominated by other reasons. Reluctance to adopt was attributed to systems performance and availability risk; sunk cost and satisfaction with existing systems; data security risk; loss of control and lack of vendor trust; and finally functionality fit and customization limitations. The findings provide new insights into the slow SaaS ERP adoption in South Africa and provide empirically supported data to guide future research efforts. Findings can be used by SaaS vendors to address perceived shortcomings of SaaS ERP software.

Current trends on ICT technologies for enterprise information systems

“…In (Grubisic et al, 2014) and (Faasen et al, 2013), the authors analyze the possible acceptation of companies for the Cloud Computing paradigm applied to ERPs. (Lewandoswski et al, 2013) focus more specifically on its possible use in SMEs, while critical success factors for such solution are suggested in (Emam, 2013).…”

An AHP Algorithm for an Effective ERP Type Selection Based on the African Context

“…Saas ERPs are reported to be much cheaper than their on-premise counterpart, but are less adapted for niche organisations (Faasen et al, 2013). The cloud ERP increases scalability and manageability, but don't have to be confused with Saas ERP.…”

Cloud ERP Adoption Opportunities and Concerns: The Role of Organizational Size

“…This uncertainty is further nurtured by the fact that most researchers [1,5,18,21] who have discussed the issue of cloud ERP adoption, have merely focused on dealing with opportunities and concerns of its use in general, without analyzing them based on the different characteristics that the influential factor of organizational size can shape. There are also a number of authors [14,[22][23][24][25] who discuss cloud ERP adoption only from the standpoint of SMEs, analyzing factors which affect their decision making of whether to move their ERP to the cloud or not. Thus, there is a gap in the extant literature, as there is hardly any research which deals with large companies in order to explore the factors that comprise positive influence to go for a cloud solution but also those that act as inhibitors of migrating to the cloud.…”