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Sat, Nov 8, 11:30 - 11:55, Pueblo B Paper (refereed)

Recommended Citation: Somarajan, C R, J R Weber, and K Surendran. Planning and Implementation of an ERP system in a University in USA: Some Insights and Guidelines. In The Proceedings of the Conference on Information Systems Applied Research 2008, v 1 (Phoenix): §3125. ISSN: 0000-0000.

Planning and Implementation of an ERP system in a University in USA: Some Insights and Guidelines

Refereed

12 pages

Chellappan Somarajan    [a1] [a2]
Department of Accounting and Management Information Systems
Southeast Missouri State University    [u1] [u2]
Cape Girardeau, Missouri, USA    [c1] [c2]

John R. Weber    [a1] [a2]
Information Technology
Southeast Missouri State University    [u1] [u2]
Cape Girardeau, Missouri, USA    [c1] [c2]

Ken Surendran    [a1] [a2]
Department of Computer Science
Southeast Missouri State University    [u1] [u2]
Cape Girardeau, Missouri, USA    [c1] [c2]

This paper discusses the successful planning and implementation of an ERP system in an academic institution. Such an endeavor is a complex process involving technical, financial, organizational, and operational issues. The first two are hard issues that can be handled through standard approaches. However, the last two, being somewhat soft issues, require special approaches for ensuring success. The dynamics of these two soft aspects in academic institutions are somewhat different than those in business organizations. The authors, pooling their management and academic experiences in dealing with ERPs, discuss various approaches to handling both the hard and soft issues, especially the soft issues that are specific to academic institutions. They observed that the implementation of the Human Resource, Finance, Advancement modules went smoothly. However, a few glitches were encountered during the implementation of the Student module due to problems in data migration from the legacy system. Also, additional third party software products are being installed to meet the functionalities not offered in the ERP system. In the absence of established common standards and best practices for planning and implementation that are specific to academic institutions, this paper may be of use to the future ERP adopters in academia.

Keywords: ERP planning in academia, organizational and operational issues

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