Guo Chao Peng

Surfacing ERP exploitation risks through a risk ontology

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a risk identification checklist for facilitating user companies to surface, organise and manage potential risks associated with the post‐adoption of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.Design/methodology/approach – A desktop study, based on the process of a critical literature review, is conducted by the researchers. The critical review focuses on information systems and business research papers, books, case studies and theoretical articles, etc.Findings – By systematically and critically analysing and synthesising the literature review, the researchers identify and propose a total of 40 ERP post‐implementation risks related to diverse operational, analytical, organisation‐wide and technical aspects. A risk ontology is subsequently established to highlight these ERP risks, as well as to present their potential causal relationships.Research limitations/implications – For researchers, the established ERP risk ontology represents a starting point for f...

Identification and assessment of risks associated with ERP post‐implementation in China

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify, assess and explore potential risks that Chinese companies may encounter when using, maintaining and enhancing their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in the post‐implementation phase.Design/methodology/approach – The study adopts a deductive research design based on a cross‐sectional questionnaire survey. This survey is preceded by a political, economic, social and technological analysis and a set of strength, weakness, opportunity and threat analyses, from which the researchers refine the research context and select state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) in the electronic and telecommunications industry in Guangdong province as target companies to carry out the research. The questionnaire design is based on a theoretical risk ontology drawn from a critical literature review process. The questionnaire is sent to 118 selected Chinese SOEs, from which 42 (84 questionnaires) valid and usable responses are received and analysed.Findings – The findings ident...

Risks affecting ERP post‐implementation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify, assess and explore potential risks that can affect long‐term viability of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in the post‐implementation and exploitation phase.Design/methodology/approach – The research took a large Chinese private group as a case study. A theoretical ERP risk ontology, which was adopted from the literature, was used to frame the study and generate data collection tools. Two questionnaires were thus designed and used to explore ERP post‐implementation risks in the case company.Findings – The study identified 37 risk events, of which seven were identified as the most critical for ERP exploitation in the case company. The findings show that organisational and human‐related risks are the crucial factors for potential ERP failure and not the usually suspect technical risks.Research limitations/implications – This study contributes to the knowledge of ERP in general, and provides valuable insights into ERP post‐implementation risks in ...

Expanding the concept of requirements traceability The role of electronic records management in gathering evidence of crucial communications and negotiations

Purpose – Despite its tremendous success and achievements, the information science (IS) industry has been plagued by shadows of failure and inefficiency since its early days. This paper takes the stance that poor communication with target organizations and users is one of the major causes of these problems. If this communication is not properly recorded and managed, many of the agreed decisions may never be assumed by target organizations, therefore leaving project managers entirely responsible for failures or deviation from initial requirements. Nonetheless, the vast majority of Software (SW) development companies have very weak provision for Electronic Records Management (ERM). This is evident from the persistent use of ISO 9001 and ISO 90003 in their Quality Assurance (QA) and the consistent neglecting of the ISO 15489 standard for records management. This paper aims to examine this issueDesign/methodology/approach – Since there are no studies in this area, this research employed an inductive qualitati...

Interrelated Barriers and Risks Affecting ERP Post-Implementation in China

The research reported in this paper aimed to identify and explore potential barriers and risks that can affect successful exploitation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in Chinese companies. A barrier and risk ontology was established from a critical literature review process. In order to examine this theoretical model, the study employed a deductive research design based on a cross-sectional questionnaire survey. The survey received 84 responses from 42 Chinese firms. The findings identified that organizational barriers are often the main triggers of other ERP barriers and risks, including the system ones. The study thus concluded and suggested that Chinese companies need to pay substantial attention to the organizational barriers identified, since properly managing this type of obstacle may potentially help them to mitigate and remove other ERP challenges and risks and thus ensuring long-term success in ERP post-adoption.

Towards ERP success in SMEs through business process review prior to implementation

Purpose – ERP systems are not the exclusive concern of large companies anymore. More and more small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are now engaging with the implementation and exploitation of this type of system. However, reports of ERP failure are numerous and frequent. Very often, this failure results from technical and implementation problems. But even more frequently, it is due to lack of preparation, by the companies themselves, for the implementation process. The purpose of the study reported in this paper was to identify and explore ways in which SMEs may need to prepare themselves before implementing ERP systems. Design/methodology/approach – The research took a Cypriot SME as a case study and adopted an inductive approach supported by in-depth interviews as the main method of data collection. The qualitative data collected were analysed by using a thematic analysis approach. Subsequently, a rich picture and concept maps were used to represent the findings generated. Findings – The study iden...

Exploring Cultural Impact on Long-Term Utilization of Enterprise Systems

Culture has been increasingly recognized as a key determinant of IS and ERP success. By drawing on theoretical antecedents in previous IS and culture studies, this paper examines and analyzes cultural impact on ERP utilization in China. The study involved 25 semi-structured interviews in two Chinese companies. The findings identified that Chinas cultural features of high power distance, low uncertainty avoidance and collectivism, can originate a set of crucial ERP barriers and problems, which are located in diverse management and organizational areas in Chinese companies. The study suggested that, in order to address these cultural obstacles and thus ensure long-term ERP success, Chinese enterprises need to substantially change their traditional business procedures, staff attitudes, and management behaviour. Given that many cultural factors are not unique to a country, the findings of this study should have applicability beyond China.

Identifying operational requirements to select suitable decision models for a public sector e-procurement decision support system

Public sector procurement should be a transparent and fair process. Strict legal requirements are enforced on public sector procurement to make it a standardised process. To make fair decisions on selecting suppliers, a practical method which adheres to legal requirements is important. The research that is the base for this paper aimed at identifying a suitable Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) method for the specific legal and functional needs of the Maldivian Public Sector. To identify such operational requirements, a set of focus group interviews were conducted in the Maldives with public officials responsible for procurement decision making. Based on the operational requirements identified through focus groups, criteria-based evaluation is done on published MCDA methods to identify the suitable methods for e-procurement decision making. This paper describes the identification of the operational requirements and the results of the evaluation to select suitable decision models for the Maldivian context.

Establishing an evidence-based 9D evaluation approach for ERP post-implementation

The purpose of this paper is to propose a systematic and customisable framework, titled the 9D approach, aiming to evaluate the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems as well as to identify potential socio-technical problems, misfits and deficiencies that can cause ERP failure during the system post-implementation phase.,The proposed 9D ERP evaluation framework includes nine dimensions and 85 evaluation criteria. This theoretical framework is then used in a six-step evaluation process based on a mixed-methods design. A case study involving a large-size private company in China was used as an exemplification to illustrate how the proposed 9D approach can be applied in practices.,The findings of the study clearly demonstrated that after the ERP “go-live” point, companies still experience many challenges and problems in the post-implementation phase. These problems can be located in very diverse organisational, systemic and personnel aspects of the company, as well as across different functional areas and organisational levels. The proposed 9D approach was demonstrated to be an efficient and systematic tool to investigate and explore such ERP problems in an in-depth level within the organisational context.,This study contributes to the theory of IS evaluation in general, and provides valuable insights into the ERP post-implementation evaluation in particular.,The proposed ERP evaluation approach forms a sound base for continuous ERP improvement and contributes to sustain seamless alignment between ERP and its organisational context. The customisable feature of the framework offers flexibility and enables its use by companies of all sizes, any sector, and any country.,To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, this is the most extensive and comprehensive framework for the post-evaluation of ERPs proposed hitherto. The need for this new framework was grounded on the argumentation of the drawbacks of existing ERP measurement and evaluation studies that simply focus on success rather than the more critical failure factors.

Identifying user requirements of wearable healthcare technologies for Chinese ageing population

China, like many other developed and developing countries in the world, is facing a rapid ageing population. This phenomenon has led to profound impacts on Chinas national health and welfare system, social stability, economic development, and productivity, and so is forcing the country to adopt new innovative, resourceful and reliable means to offer better health and caring services to the elderly people. Wearable technologies have the potential to aid this struggle, but there is currently very limited understanding on Chinese old peoples requirements for using these technologies. Such misunderstanding can lead to severe mismatch between wearable functions and actual user needs, and so minimize the potential and usefulness of wearable technologies. Therefore, this paper aims to address this knowledge gap by reporting on an exploratory study that investigated Chinese older peoples user requirements towards wearable healthcare devices. Five focus groups were conducted to collect insights and opinions respectively from five Chinese families. Each family participated in the focus group contained at least 1-2 elderly member, together with 2-4 family members who held caring responsibilities. The thematic analysis approach was used to analyse the collected qualitative data. The results showed that user requirements of Chinese elderly people contained three main categories, namely healthcare, data privacy and security, and commodity and entertainment needs. The paper concluded that these identified user requirements should be carefully considered by wearable hardware designers, system developers, and service providers if they want their innovative products and services to be accepted by the intended users in the Chinese market.