A Survey of Effective Factors in Decision Making about Utilizing Enterprise Resource Planning Systems in Iranian Organizations

During the recent decades, the significant role played by information has turned information management in organizations into a challenging subject. To improve this, various organizational solutions were proposed, one of the most prominent of which was enterprise resource planning (ERP). Utilizing enterprise resource planning systems in Iranian organizations is a necessity. Since enterprise resource planning systems are an importing technology, organizations should choose the most suitable option, from among various organizational solutions during a decision making process. Designing this process requires identification of effective factors and criteria in decision making. These are the factors and criteria which, when considered in decision making, cause the organization to act properly while responding to its needs and problems. Although there is a great need for paving the way to this decision making, little studies have been done in this regard in our country which has created a gap between Iranian organizations and enterprise resource planning systems. This article is prepared to fill this gap, to reduce decision making risks, and to encourage organizations to pass this doubtful path. To do this, two distinct questionnaires have been used to identify the effective factors and criteria in decision making for utilizing enterprise resource planning systems. The major experts and counselors in this field, who are developing this system, had their opinions used. The effective factors and criteria were then classified into technical and organizational perspectives. After specifying the priorities of the elements, creating harmony among the systems in order to elevate the informative trend of the organization in organizational view, matching and cooperating the software package of ERP with the organization processes were all identified as the most important elements of which the methods of applying the elements to decide the application of ERP is explained through presenting applied suggestion in this research.