A Web-Based DSS for the Selection, Implementation and Evaluation of ERP Systems

The Enterprise Resource Planning System is a huge and complex information system that enables the whole organization to operate, collaborate and coordinate its activities through the use of a single data repository. It is expensive to procure and takes a long time to implement. As such, organizations are extremely cautious before making the decision on ERP implementation. Once ERP is implemented, organizations need to continuously monitor its performance and its alignment with the organizations strategic objectives. In this paper we describe our work on the development of a web-based Decision Support System (DSS) that can help organizations to evaluate the success of their ERP implementation and measure the benefits obtained. The challenge of developing the tool lies in determining the criteria for an ERP implementation to be successful, identifying measurements of ERP benefits and ascertaining productivity indicators. To acquire all these yardsticks and measures we had to conduct a survey, case studies and interviews. Finally, all the findings were incorporated in the web-based DSS tool and we called this web based system, SEEBAS.