Partial fulfillment for award of the degree of Master of Business Administration

Table of Contents

The purpose of this research was to understand the benefits Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems render to commercial organizations in Kenya and to understand the challenges that affect the ERP Implementation process. These benefits and challenges have direct impact on the performance of the business and therefore the study had sought to understand complexity of these two factors on businesses adopting the ERP systems.
A conceptual framework was designed out of the literature review whereby the relationship model was developed between ERP system and challenges. A set of hypothesis were derived from the model. The relationship of benefits and challenges against the size of the organization and the age of an ERP system were hypothesized. An exploratory study was conducted using online survey system and over 35 ERP User companies were sent invitation emails to participate in the online survey.
The study established key benefits and its extent, key challenges and its extent and their relationship with the size of organization and the age of ERP system. The study also found how these benefits affect business performance and how these challenges arise in organizations. The findings were in line with the literature review and general principles of business management.
The surveyed sample size was comprised of companies from various business sectors in Kenya. The sample size was comprised of companies from various business sectors in Kenya. The sample size was relatively small, which partially restricts the generalization of results to the whole population of ERP adopters. Future research will involve combining detailed case studies and a larger survey sample. This will be more possible with increase of ERP adopters in the country.
This finding will help ERP adopters and vendors to clearly understand challenges of implementing ERP in various sizes of organization and the process of realizing benefits with time. The findings will also help the strategist in mapping out balance scored card strategy with the clear understanding of the relationship of benefits and challenges. The findings will also assist academician in drafting concepts and mathematical models of ERP systems. This research adds to the growing body of knowledge on ERP systems implementation, and such analysis has not yet been established in any of the past researches on ERP systems.
KEYWORDS: ERP SYSTEMS, IMPLEMENTATION, BENEFITS, CHALLENGES, KENYAN BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT