CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR ERP IMPLEMENTATION - THE CASE OF QATAR

Abstract

Due to ERP high failure rate, Enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation issues have been highly addressed in the literatures. Some studies have concentrated on the effect of perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU) on behavioral intention (BI) based upon the theory of technology acceptance model (TAM), others focused on the critical success factors (CSF) of ERP implementation from personal or organizational perspectives. However, few studies put them together to examine the influence of PU and PEOU on BI which are key factors to ERP acceptance besides investigating the most important critical success factors of ERP implementation. This study is a specific attempt that developed a framework extending TAM model with computer self-efficacy (CSE) to examine behavioral intention to use ERP and then explored the major ERP key success factors that can turn the process of the implementation to a success in Qatari environment. Data has been collected from 40 different organizations of different business lines in Qatar out of which 321 valid responses were analyzed. Descriptive, Reliability, and correlations analyses were conducted on the sample respectively, then followed by Linear Regression Analysis that was done to validate the model’s significance. PU, PEOU and CSE, indicated significant relations with the behavioural intention to use ERP systems in Qatari organizations and contributed to 56% of its variation. Then a Descriptive Analysis was conducted to rank the CSFs in order of significance from ERP end user perspective. The study concluded that PU, PEOU and CSE are significant factors to predict ERP implementation and adoption. Moreover, it explored the major critical success factors that brings success to implementation process in Qatari organizations, which are Top management support, followed by User training on software, and finally Project management process.