Abstract
Today Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) face global challenges and continuous change in consumer demands, most recently COVID-19 and the prospect of a future Serious Acute Respiratory (SARS) pandemic generating further challenges, thus SMEs require to be more flexible to respond quickly to these changes. This can be achieved by transformation into the digital economy, use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, integrating business processes and to have real-time information which will enable senior management to make better, quicker informed decisions. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is one of the solutions for the SMEs to overcome these challenges and to obtain a competitive advantage. Subanidja, and Broto, 2019 stated that ERP systems are still not widely implemented by SMEs compared to their introduction in large businesses. However, the SME have a justifiable reputation for being proactive, open, willing and receptive to the adoption of new technologies, concepts and improvements. Also, SMEs differ in several inherent characteristics which are likely to impact on the ERP system implementations, hence it does not make sense to use the same frameworks that have been developed for large companies to implement ERP system within SMEs. One of the main risks of adopting ERP in SMEs is that SMEs have limited resources, so they cannot afford to fail to implement ERP system. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore ERP implementation process in SME context. The developed framework has been used to implement an ERP system in a SME. It highlighted the issues that need to be addressed while implementing ERP system in SMEs such as clearly defined scope of implementation procedure, suitable project planning and minimal customisation of the system selected for implementation. This study contributed to both research and practice and the research findings could aid practitioners and SMEs when embarking on ERP projects, as well as, to suggest future research avenues.
6. Conclusion
The importance of ERP system for supporting SMEs has been widely recognised. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to develop a framework to assist SMEs to implement ERP system and to highlight issues that need to be addressed during implementing the ERP system in the SMEs. The developed framework in this paper consist of nine phases where each phase has input, processes, and output. The applicability of the framework was explained through a case study of a company that employed a phases of implementation of the framework. This study contributes to the on-going research on implementation of ERP systems in SMEs. SMEs considering the implementation of ERP systems in future, can use the developed framework in this study by following the appropriate steps and phases which have also been demonstrated in the case study. The business changes generated by COVID-19 dramatically alternate the individual and business relationship regarding employment, customer, retailer, supplies, and service provided, the World Health Organization (WHO) has indicated the probability of further SARS pandemic. This framework provides a methodology for SMEs to be ‘ahead of the game’
