A Comparative Evaluation of ERP Implementation Factors in Higher Education

Extensive research has been conducted in identifying the critical issues and the implementation challenges involved in an ERP project in higher education. But limited studies investigated the implementation issues in the context of higher education institutions. The authors attempt to observe and compare two different higher education institutions in South Africa and India with the objective of bringing out the practical determinants of roadblocks to a successful ERP project implementation and subsequently provide the readers with possible solutions. The findings suggest implementation issues broadly evolve from three major areas, namely, project management issues, which involve the technical as well as the functional aspects; issues concerning the improper application of software development life cycle phases; and human capital issues which involve beliefs and attitudes. The authors strongly believe that the learning received from the case studies significantly contribute to the organizational knowledge concerning technology and business process reengineering.