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94 Chapter 4 • Development Life Cycle

TABLE 4-1 Differences Between ERP and Other Software Packages
ERP Software Other Packaged Software
Software Cost Millions of dollars Hundreds to thousands
Significance to Mission critical Support or productivity
Organization improvement
Installation Time One to several years Almost instantly
Change Management Requires significant change management Requires some training and
Strategy strategy from beginning to end for support
success; business process change, training,
communications, etc.
Implementation Costs Requires in-house employee time, Requires little or no consulting
consultants, and vendor support in support or vendor technical
millions of dollars support

experienced this problem in real life when they implemented SAP/R3 in the late 1990s when their
supply-chain distribution was disrupted, causing a big dent in their holiday sales. Any breakdown of
an ERP application can therefore be very disruptive and cost millions of dollars to the organization.
A rigorous ERP life cycle process, though expensive and time consuming, is therefore rec-
ommended to ensure success. ERP systems can be deployed in a big bang or phased approach,
either of which initiates the stages of a system development life cycle. According to the staged
1
system implementation model, the life cycle consists of four phases—adaptation, acceptance,
routinization, and infusion. Adaptation is similar to system investigation, whereas acceptance is
similar to system analysis where user requirements are analyzed and accepted by the team before
proceeding to design and implementation. Additionally, routinization is where the ERP system is
either customized or business processes are changed to assimilate the system in the organization.
Once operational, the infusion or maintenance and evaluation phase gets started where recurring
problems are fixed and new features are sought for next implementation life cycle.

ERP Implementation Plan
An ERP implementation plan is used to create a roadmap or blueprint to meet cost, scope, and
time constraints of an implementation. There are many different ERP implementation method-
ologies promoted by different vendors and consultants. The appropriateness of the plan depends,
in part, on the project, the company, and the reasons for the implementation.
Following are three major implementation plan choices:
1. Comprehensive. A comprehensive ERP integration plan is the most expensive, lengthy,
and costly approach. It involves implementation of the full functionality of the ERP soft-
ware in addition to industry-specific modules. Implementing the full functionality requires
a high level of business process reengineering (BPR) with major changes in the business
processes and customization of legacy systems.

1 Kwon, T. & Zmud, R. (1987). Unifying the Fragmented Models of Information Systems Implementation, in:
R. J. Boland & R. A. Hirschheim (Eds.), Critical Issues in Information Systems Research (pp. 227–252z).
Chichester, UK: Wiley.