Investigation of ERP Implementation Benefits and Defections in Education

With the computerisation of business activities in higher education institutions ERP vendors quickly perceived a new market opportunity. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are highly complex information systems. The ERP project yields a software solution integrating information and business processes to enable sharing throughout an organization of information entered once in a database. The range of functionality of ERP systems has further expanded in recent years to include more applications, such as grants management, marketing automation, electronic commerce, student systems, and supply chain systems. Examples of ERP systems include those from Oracle, SCT (Banner), PeopleSoft, and SAP. Many ERP implementations have been classified as failures because they did not achieve predetermined corporate goals. This article identifies success factors, software selection steps, and implementation procedures critical to a successful implementation.