A Process Management Perspective on Future ERP System Development in the Financial Service Sector

Most organizations use Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, which provide a platform for integrating processes and data. Even though competitive pressure forces financial service organizations to permanently improve their business processes, there is a lack of research regarding the use of ERP systems within financial services. Focusing on the insurance sector, we are interested in current and potential process management issues with regard to ERP systems. We examine strategic IT trends by conducting semi-structured expert interviews with participants in IT-strategic decision making. We present current trends and identify two main issues: the IT-independent management of processes and the need to engage in service-oriented architecture (SOA). From a practitioners’ view, the use of ERP systems has to be considered critically in the insurance sector. Further research on the identified issues has to take into account the sector-specific characteristics