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Top1. Introduction
Enterprise Resource Planning systems integrate business functions and departments allowing rapid flow of information within the organization. The widespread usage of internet expanded the scope of ERP by providing inter-organizational integration (Eckhartz et al., 2010; Alimazighi & Bouhmadi, 2011; Grant et al., 2013). Due to the developments in cloud computing and SaaS (Software as a Service) delivery models, it is predicted that ERP systems will continue to produce information system solutions for corporations (Lucintel, 2012). Additionally, an extensive usage of ERPs by SMEs (Ahmad & Cuenca, 2013; Chang et al., 2010, Malhotra & Temponi, 2010; Doom et al. 2010) and developing countries (Research & Markets, 2012; IDC, 2012; Chan, 2011) are being observed as vendors are offering more economic costs. Studies in developing countries include China (Srivastava et al., 2009; Zhang et al., 2005; Zhu et al., 2010), Taiwan (Liu, 2011), Iran (Amid et al., 2012), India (Garg and Agarwal, 2014), Poland (Ziemba & Oblak, 2013) and Saudi Arabia (Aldayel et al., 2011; Ullah et al. 2013).
On the other hand, various difficulties still arise in ERP applications in terms of duration overruns, cost overruns and received benefits. According to Panorama’s (2013) independent ERP research, approximately 59% of projects have exceeded their planned budgets, 53% of projects have exceeded their planned durations and a full 56% of respondent organizations have received less than 50% of the measurable benefits they expected from their ERP applications. Therefore, scholars continue to explore the critical factors in achieving success and quality in ERP applications (Ram & Conkindale, 2014). Initial studies considered ERP applications as a project and introduced a number of critical success factors at implementation stage (Bingi et al., 1999; Nah et al., 2001; Basoglu et al., 2007). Recent studies argue that ERP applications are more than IT projects (Ahmad & Cuenca, 2013) and emphasize the significance of continuity in post-implementation stages (Zhu et al., 2010; Ifinedo et al., 2010, Ozturkoglu & Esendemir, 2014) and interrelations of critical success factors (Grabski et al., 2011).
In the critical success factors (CSFs) research stream, quite a few factors are identified by the past studies and the most important factors are evaluated according to the occurrence rates of CSFs (Ahmad & Cuenca, 2013). Furthermore, scholars proposed taxonomies for practitioners and researchers (Nah et al., 2001; Basoglu et al., 2007; Dezdar & Sulamain, 2009). Most of the studies have focused on the evaluations of project managers, senior executives and IT personnel in determining the critical factors affecting the application success. Whereas, end-users play a critical role in the success and quality of ERP applications at every stage. Therefore, we believe the perceptions of end-users about CSFs should also be examined.