Impact of the Modularity of ERPs on the Information Systems Disintegration

This paper aims to verify a possible impact of the ERP modularity on the information systems disintegration. As an ERP package could be viewed as an integration indicator, it could thus measure the information system integration rate (ISIR). When an ERP is modular, clients who desire to be independent from an ERP vendor could easily buy other subsystems from a third party; and thus the information system integration rate would be low. On the contrary, when an ERP is not modular, clients cannot easily buy, due to some issues, other subsystems from a third party; and thus the ISIR would be high. Consequently, when the level of modularity, proposed by ERP vendors, is modified from low to high; or when clients change their information technology strategy from dependence on an ERP vendor to an independence from this vendor, the information system integration rate could be affected. This paper tries to understand how these changes could impact the information system integration rate; and especially how they could provoke the disintegration of information system.