Sustainability of ERPS performance outcomes: The role of post-implementation review quality

It is found that ERPS change firms demonstrate improved differential performance as a result of their use of post-implementation activities that contribute to better system implementation planning and business process effectiveness when undertaken shortly after the initial system implementation.

Abstract

This paper examines the nature and timing of post-implementation activities for ERPS adopting firms. We extend both the scope and granularity of prior literature to use seven categories of post-implementation activities theorized in the Nicolaou [Nicolaou, A.I. (2004b), "Quality of post-implementation review for enterprise resource planning systems" Int J Account Inf Syst 5 (May): pp. 25–49.] framework as our unit of analysis. We also examine the timing of those post-implementation events and classify firms in clusters characterizing the timing of such activities. We find that both the nature of post-implementation events and their timing are important for post-implementation change making firms. Specifically, ERPS change firms demonstrate improved differential performance as a result of their use of post-implementation activities that contribute to better system implementation planning and business process effectiveness when undertaken shortly after the initial system implementation. On the other hand, system deployment-related post-implementation activities that typically occur at later stages of system operation appear to have a negative impact on a firm's short-run profitability. Our results should be of interest to ERPS adopting firms considering post-implementation changes. We find that no post-implementation change is universally good just as no timing is universally efficacious. Therefore, firms that match their post-implementation changes appropriately with the best timing for such changes stand to derive differential performance gains over peers that do not. However, some changes are inherently more risky.