ERP implementation success: The people (P) factor

Enterprise Resource Planning, popularly known as ERP, has grown leaps & bounds in the last few decades. It has become an integral part of many large organizations, whose success, in terms of increase in productivity, efficiency and ease of functioning, can be attributed to an effective ERP implementation. Yet there are speculations regarding the success rate of ERP Implementations. According to PMI (Project Management Institute) nearly 70% of the ERP Deployment projects fails, are late (schedule slippage), or go over-budget. Sometimes even a successful ERP implementation, could largely be wasted and the benefits be nullified, because an organization fails to identify which are the factors crucial to the successful implementation in their context. Taking into account numerous articles on the Critical Success Factors, one very pervasive but least taken care off factor is the P factor or the people factor. The Objective of this paper will be to explore the Critical Success Factors for an effective Enterprise Resource Planning and in turn find out the different stakeholders of an ERP System, their stake and contribution, and how can they be effectively contribute for a successful ERP implementation. Using extant literature, the paper tries to explore and find out the kind of involvement the different stakeholders have, the stage of implementation in which they are involved and make recommendations for effective involvement.