An empirical study on critical success factors in implementing an enterprise resource planning system

The purpose of this study is to derive critical success factors for ERP system implementation by integrating managerial, technical, human resource and organizational culture factors which have been proposed as influencing factors for the performance of ERP system implementation in previous studies. Especially, this study divides ERP system implementation process into preparation stage, implement stage and settle-down and stabilization stage, and then derives critical success factors in each stage. The data for empirical analysis of the research model are collected from 64 companies and the respondents for questionnaire consist of ERP system implementation project managers and user department managers in companies which have already operated it after ERP system installation. The main results of this study are as follows. First, it derives 27 success factors through comprehensive review of various factors which may affect ERP system implementation performance, and categorizes them into one of three stages: preparation stage, implement stage, and settle-down and stabilization stage. Second, the relationship between many success factors at each stage (preparation stage, implement stage, and settle-down and stabilization stage) and peformance variables is tested. As a result, the significant correlations between many success factors at each stage and ERP system implementation performance are found, and the difference among success factors in the degree of influencing the system performance is significantly shown. Finally, the relationship between process-oriented performance variables and result-oriented performance ones is tested. As a result, it is found that there is significant correlation between process-oriented performance variables except for one variable – project resource management appropriateness – and result-oriented performance ones. The theoretical contribution of this study is to derive a comprehensive model of critical success factors for implementing ERP system project from the system development life cycle perspective, and empirically test it through field survey with a wide range of data collection. And, the practical implication of this study is to present the desirable guidelines for performing ERP system implementation project successfully.