How consultant participation lead to ERP implementation satisfaction: a study upon the Iranian industries

Abstract

Due to high levels of investment required in the implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and considerable differences in ERP adoption results, substantial research attention has been devoted to exploring critical success factors (CSFs) concerning ERP implementation. Little attention, however, has been paid to the mechanisms of how these factors influence successful ERP implementation. This study focused on three CSFs, namely: consultant participation, user training, and IT staff skills. The authors developed a research model including the relationships between the aforementioned CSF variables and ERP implementation success variable, namely ERP implementation satisfaction. The purpose of this research was to explore the direct effect of consultant participation on ERP implementation success (satisfaction) and examines the indirect effect of that via user training, and IT staff skills. Our research model was assessed using a sample of 249 ERP users in Iranian organizations. Partial least squares (PLS) technique was used for data analysis. The PLS results confirmed our six hypotheses. After integrating the results, we found that consultant participation positively influenced ERP implementation satisfaction either directly or indirectly through user training and IT staff skills.