Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software packages play an important role in business today, while their implementation projects exhibit a high level of complexity and failure, hence the emergence of the line of research on their critical success factors (CSFs). Employing a vendor to implement ERP is the norm in most companies, and CSFs related to the vendor are cited in the literature; however, some studies suggest the in-house implementation alternative. This dissertation discusses the effect of using an in-house implementation on the implementation success through comparing such implementation to a vendor-led one taking place at one same company in the Middle East - and hence in the same settings - but at an earlier stage. At a secondary level, the dissertation studies the project management and top management support CSFs in both implementation stages and their effect on success. The dissertation employs descriptive quantitative analysis through a questionnaire directed to several categories of employees and managers besides the qualitative analysis through interviews with senior management.

Autorentext

Nezar Shehabuddeen is an Egyptian engineer who works in the ERP consultancy field since 2000; traversing the three angles of the industry - the vendor, the consulting company, and the customer site, which culminated in his academic business interest in the same area. He is also a published Arabic poet.