Adoption of Enterprise Resource Planning: Analysis Using Structural Equation Modeling

Abstract

ERP is one of the most important innovations that impacts the business world, generating tangible as well as intangible improvements in many professional environments. Firms adopting ERP software face the double challenge of successfully selecting and implementing this technological innovation, while ensuring that it is used in a way that produces real added value for the company. The large number of failures reported in the ERP literature underscores the fact that companies may not realize the expected benefits. This is particularly true for SMEs which, moreover, have their own contingencies, of limited resources, making them vulnerable to the failure of an ERP implementation. This constant therefore leads us to question, first, the origins of this success, that is to say, the determinants of the success of this technical and organizational innovation; then, secondly, on the existence of a general model for analyzing dependency relationships between these determinants and the success perceived by management. The empirical study is carried out with 72 SMEs that have integrated all or part of their management IS with an ERP. The analysis of the data collected using a questionnaire, applying the method of structural equations (SEM), confirms in this communication the existence of a "general fit" of the data with supposed causal relationships.

Keywords:ERP success, IT infrastructure, integration, systemic approach, structural equation modelling (SEM).