A master plan for the implementation of sustainable enterprise resource planning system

Abstract

The world is faced with the problem of integration between sustainable business functions. Sustainability data are not sufficiently integrated and used for decision making. To solve this problem, organisations need information systems to facilitate their sustainability initiatives. A number of vendors such as SAP, Microsoft and Oracle have developed Sustainable Enterprise Resource Planning (S-ERP) systems as a holistic solution to support sustainability initiatives. However, organisations still face the problem of implementing this system. There is a lack of master plan, which shows the stages, dimensions and steps to assist the practitioners in implementing S-ERP systems. Therefore, this study attempts to develop an S-ERP implementation master plan that consists of roadmap, framework and guidelines, and to evaluate the usability of the master plan from academicians and practitioners perspective. In order to attain the research objectives, this study employs a conceptual research method which relies primarily on the literature for the development of a master plan. Various research fields including sustainability, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, and relevant literature were observed in order to discover how academicians and practitioners solved the problems of integration between sustainable business functions. Since an S-ERP system is a complex system that needs appropriate strategy and planning, various concepts including project management, strategic management, and sustainability were hugely employed in developing the master plan. In addition, the usability of the master plan was evaluated by 12 experts from the academia and industry via a peer review method. This evaluation consists of two main phases including data collection through semi-structured interview and data analysis using ATLAS.ti 6 software. As a result, the roadmap in the S-ERP system implementation master plan was divided into two concepts: general overview and specific features, followed by the purpose of each step. Moreover, the framework in the S-ERP system implementation master plan was divided into two frameworks: sustainability implementation portfolio and S-ERP implementation project. Following the concept employed in the frameworks, the guidelines were divided into two guidelines: sustainability implementation portfolio and S-ERP implementation project. From the evaluation results, the experts confirmed that the proposed S-ERP implementation master plan can generally be used for implementing S-ERP systems in all types of industry. The master plan for the implementation of S-ERP system could serve as a theoretical base for further research in S-ERP system, which can give more insights into the system implementation. In addition, this master plan could serve as a tool for practitioners in implementing S-ERP systems within organisations.