Table of Contents

Introduction 2

ERP Implementation Process 3

Implementation Obstacles 8
Implementation Success Level Analysis 9

Suggestions for Improvement 10

Conclusion 10

References 12

Appendix 14

Introduction
To be successful in today's competitive and continuous evolving information technology (IT) market companies must be able to utilise their skills, information and knowledge to the highest efficiency level possible. Utilisation of and control over these factors will aid companies in acquiring and maintaining competitive advantages over others operating in the same competitive IT market. The implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system would be perfect to suit a
Time was a big issue for Cisco and as a result the ERP project implementation needed to be finished within fifteen months, which is a very short time period considering that on average an ERP implementation takes twenty-three months (Wheatley, 2000). The time constraint also resulted in the decision against the development and use of a business case. An ERP system installation will, almost certainly, change the way in which Cisco is performing its daily business, and hence it would have been advisable to perform a business change to see how the ERP system would change to company's processes.

Cisco's new ERP system would have to meet the business needs and this will require heavy involvement from the business community. Cisco created a project selection team consisting of the very best people from the company, pulled away from their current jobs, and employees of KPMG, which was included in the project as a strong integration partner to aid the overall selection and implementation process. Within two days this new team, narrowed the field to five packages from different ERP vendors. The team has successfully looked at experiences of other companies implementing ERP systems and this will usually avoid many of the organisational, cultural and operational challenges that plagues the vast majority of initial ERP implementation projects (Beatty & Williams, 2006). After another week, this choice was narrowed down to only two vendors: Oracle and another strong