Causes influencing the effectiveness of the post‐implementation ERP system

This article aims to find a chain of causal relations affecting the operating effectiveness of the implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) system instead of focusing on either the evaluation of software/vendors/consultants or critical successful factors (CSF) identification for ERP implementation, a course followed by the dominant ERP literature.

This article is a process‐oriented approach and aims to give a moving picture of how one step affects another step from pre‐implementation stage, to during‐implementation stage, and to post‐implementation stage.

A significant insight learned from this study is that end‐users across the organization must be educated from the onset of ERP implementation. Although education is a corner‐stone of ERP implementation, the user training is usually only emphasized and the courses are centered on computer/system operation rather than on understanding the ERP concept and spirit.

This article may be interesting to some academic researchers and practical managers, and hopefully can provide a link/step for advanced researches in exploring post‐implementation ERP.