A comprehensive decision support system for ERP pre-implementation phase

Given significant investments in enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, previous studies report unusually high failure rate and major challenges in ERP projects. The activities prior to ERP implementation, referred to as the pre-implementation phase, are very important because they significantly affect the implementation success. In this paper, the pre-implementation phase is focused in which necessary preparations before embarking on the ERP initiative, required functions and features, and the most appropriate ERP solution are decided. Such decisions are risky, costly, and very time-consuming because they necessitate working with a vast amount of information and require appropriate analytical capabilities as well as decision making methods and structures. In this paper, a comprehensive decision support system (DSS) is developed helping organisations to make the targeted decisions both efficiently and effectively. The proposed framework is applied in a real case study to illustrate its effectiveness and practicality. [Received 1 June 2011; Revised 24 August 2011; Revised 10 November 2011; Accepted 15 December 2011]