Enterprise Resource Planning Essay

2125 Words5 Pages

1. Introduction
Selecting an IT system for a company can be a very complex decision to make. According to Zachman (1987) it is becoming more and more of a necessity to be able to keep organizations from disintegrating their supply chains, to be able to 'architect enterprises'. By asking 'Why?', 'What', 'How?', 'Where?' and 'When?' one can get a clear view of a company and how it operates.

Furthermore a company needs to be able to:
- Effectively communicate business requirements with ICT people;
- Have total top executive support;
- Involve users from the start;
- Have a clear decision model, business rules and objectives (Zachman, 1987, pp. 276--292). This report will look at the implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) …show more content…

Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT)

New technology that is implemented must be accepted by users to enable a company to use it most efficiently. The UTAUT model was invented by Venkatesh (2003) who researched user intentions and user behaviour towards new technology. In the diagram below, four key elements are shown: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions.
These elements determine whether a person will accept the new technology and use it or not (Venkatesh et al 2003, pp. 425--478). In this paragraph, those four determinants are discussed, in relation to Cisco's ERP implementation.

Utaut model (Venkatesh, 2003)

4.1. Performance expectancy
Venkatesh (2003) describes this as the extent to which the new technology implemented will help an employee to do their job and increase their job …show more content…

Therefore we can conclude that executives wanted all of their employees to use this system. Working with suppliers, listening to customers and even listening to employees could have a great influence on the way they company works and the way things are done in Cisco (corporate culture may be influenced by the ERP system).
4.4. Facilitating conditions
Venkatesh (2003) describes this as: ''the degree to which an individual believes that an organizational and technical infrastructure exists to support use of the system''.

The users were very involved in the implementation from the very beginning. They therefore understood what the system did, how to operate the system and the information that the system provided. They were trained intensively and were also part of the user testing. Cisco also ensured that employees understood how the new system and processes changed and affected their daily work.

Therefore individual who were going to use the new system felt confident that they had the knowledge, understanding and IT support necessary to work with the new

More about Enterprise Resource Planning Essay

Open Document