COMPLEXITY IMPACT FACTORS ON THE INTEGRATION
PROCESS OF ERP AND NON ERP SYSTEMS
A Basis for an Evaluation Instrument
Guy Janssens
1
, Marinus Hoeijenbos
2
and Rob Kusters
1, 3
1
Open Universiteit Nederland, School of Management, P.O. Box 2960, 6401 DL, Heerlen, The Netherlands
2
Nedstaal b.v., P.O. Box 210, 2950 AE, Alblasserdam, The Netherlands
3
Eindhoven University of Technology, Department of Technology Management
P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Keywords: Complexity factor, ERP, Enterprise resource planning, Integration process, Interfaces.
Abstract: This study shows an expert confirmed initial list of factors which influence the complexity of the integration
process of ERP systems and non ERP systems. After a thorough search for complexity factors in scientific
literature, a survey amongst 8 experts in a leading European long special steel products company, which
was recently composed out of independent international companies, was conducted. The participants
confirmed the retrieved list from literature, consisting of 5 quantitative and 21 qualitative factors. The
participants added one extra qualitative factor and scored the importance of all factors. Three quantitative
factors, i.e. a technology, a business and a project factor, scored highest. When dealing with integration
issues, this initial list of factors can provide awareness for organizations to support activities such as
planning, control and risk management.
1 INTRODUCTION
Most organizations own a portfolio of many
different systems of software modules from different
suppliers (Lemahieu et al., 2003, Themistocleous et
al., 2004, Light et al., 2001), often based on different
standards, programming languages and operating
systems and unfortunately often insufficiently
documented (Themistocleous et al., 2004). In many
organizations integration of Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) systems with other systems has been
shown to be complex (Sammon and Adam 2005;
Sharif et al., 2005). There are several reasons for this
complexity: ERP systems have a monolithic
character and initially were not designed to work
with other information systems (Klaus et al., 2000).
Also ERP systems have limited flexibility because
ERP systems force organizations into adapting their
business processes according to the ERP system
designers view on these business processes (Gibson
et al., 1999; Esteves et al., 2002; Koch, 2001).
However unique business processes can provide
competitive benefits, which forces the organization
to use custom build information systems and
integrate them with their ERP system. Besides that,
there is a growing need for integration between
supply chain partners for reasons of cost reduction
and coping with the worldwide competition. What's
more, instead of using one ERP system for every
business process in an organization, there is a
tendency for using the best modules of different
ERP suppliers. This Best of Breed (B.o.b.) solution
prevents insufficient support of the business
processes or costly customization (Alshawi et al.,
2004; Light et al., 2001), but causes additional effort
for integration of the separate modules. From this we
may infer that integrating an ERP system with other
systems is an important and complex process in an
ERP implementation project.
Understanding factors that influence this
complexity should support integration activities.
Therefore this paper discusses the results of an
initial survey based study into the most important
factors which influence the complexity of the
implementation process when integrating non ERP
systems with ERP systems. First the research goal
and approach is described. Second the concept of
integration in this research is explained. Third, the
complexity factors that influence complexity
retrieved from literature are shown. After that, the
17
Janssens G., Hoeijenbos M. and Kusters R..
COMPLEXITY IMPACT FACTORS ON THE INTEGRATION PROCESS OF ERP AND NON ERP SYSTEMS - A Basis for an Evaluation Instrument.
DOI: 10.5220/0003413800170022
In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software and Database Technologies (ICSOFT-2011), pages 17-22
ISBN: 978-989-8425-76-8
Copyright
c
2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
survey method is discussed, the results from the
survey are shown and finally the results, conclusions
and further research are discussed.
2 RESEARCH GOAL
AND APPROACH
Every information system in an organization has its
own basic assumptions and technical basis. Also
every system will support different business
processes and therefore have a different purpose.
Therefore integration of information systems within
an organization, with each having their own specific
characteristics, will be a complex issue. Because the
organizational information systems differ in many
areas but nevertheless need to be integrated, it is
reasonable to assume that many factors will
influence the complexity of this integration process.
In the last decades ERP systems have become
important information systems which in many cases
act as the core or spine of the information systems
architecture in an organization (Sharif et al., 2005).
In most cases this core is surrounded by non ERP
systems that play a vital role within the organization.
These non ERP systems often support organizations
in providing extra value of services in relation to
their competitors or are specific to an organization,
and therefore cannot be replaced by an ERP module.
Since integration of ERP systems with other systems
is important, this research aims at obtaining the
factors which influence the complexity of the
integration process between ERP systems and non
ERP systems.
This was achieved by first performing an
extensive literature search for verified factors that
influence the complexity of the integration process
of ERP systems with non ERP systems. Although
several papers mention factors of influence, no
research has been found which shows a
comprehensive and confirmed list of such factors,
and equally important, shows which factors
influence most the complexity of the integration
process. Therefore a novel list of factors was
constructed from research literature in relevant
related areas. To be of value for further research and
use in ERP projects, such a list must be confirmed
by empirical research. In this research a first
investigation into the relevancy and completeness of
this novel list has been performed by retrieving the
opinion of a small group of experts. Experts seemed
a pragmatic empirical source for a first confirmation
of the retrieved factors, as came clear from literature
that there are many views on the subject and a
respectable number of factors should to be taken into
account.
The purpose of this empirical research was to
retrieve answers to the next questions:
1. Is the list retrieved from literature complete?
2. If not, what factors should be added to the list?
3. What is the relative importance of the factors on
this (appended) list?
3 INTEGRATION
In general, integration within the IT community is
the creation of links between information systems.
Because of existing different interpretations of the
word integration, this section will briefly discuss the
concept of integration as it is used in this research.
Integration is indicated by different expressions
(Themistocleous et al., 2001b, Themistocleous and
Irani, 2002): Enterprise Application Integration
(EAI), System Integration (SI), Value Chain
Integration (VCI), Supply Chain Integration (SCI),
Extended Business Integration (EBI), E-Business
Integration.
All these expressions point to integration within
an organization or integration across the borders of
an organization. The purposes of integration for an
organization are (Bhatt, 2000): reduce cost, improve
services and improve synergy effects. Reducing cost
is possible by efficiency improvement by integration
of processes and also by reducing the maintenance
cost of information systems. The improvement of
services results from a faster responsiveness to
changes on the market.
Gulledge (Gulledge, 2006) states that the term
integration is commonly used when discussing
enterprise applications. There are several definitions
of the term integration such as: ‘the interfacing of
systems together so they can pass information across
a complex technology landscape’ (Gulledge, 2006)
or ‘the extent to which data and application through
different communication networks can be shared and
accessed for organizational use’ (Bhatt, 2000).
Unfortunately these definitions are purely oriented
towards the technical aspects of integration and
leave business processes out of context.
Therefore a more comprehensive paradigm of
integration is: The integration of data resources,
the integration of application functions, and the
integration of business processes (Fan et al., 1999).
Because in the authors opinion,integration during
an ERP project is never just a technical matter,this
paper will employ the concept of integration as
proposed by Fan et al. (Fan et al.,1999)
ICSOFT 2011 - 6th International Conference on Software and Data Technologies
18
4 COMPLEXITY FACTORS
IN LITERATURE
4.1 Approach
In existing literature no acknowledged list of factors
was found that influences the complexity of the
integration concept as defined by Fan (Fan et al.,
1999). For that reason a search in ERP literature and
non ERP literature was performed into factors that
influence this complexity. By this search 45 relevant
papers were retrieved. Only 15 discussed the
research topic according to the integration concept
by Fan (Fan et al., 1999). Systematic evaluation led
to the identification of 8 main areas of influence
concerning the complexity of integration as shown
in table 1. These areas of influence are of a too high
level of abstraction to be able to be useful as
variables for indicating the level of complexity of an
integration process. Therefore also factors within
these areas of influence have been retrieved from
literature, which are more concrete and if possible
can be measured objectively. These factors are also
shown in table 1.
The definitions, sources of retrieval, motivation
why a factor influences the complexity of integration
of these main areas and the list of factors with their
relative importance are available from the authors.
4.2 Results
Although literature on the subject of integration is
often focused on technical solutions of integration
problems and on EAI, this technology focus covers
only a part of the integration problem (Sharif et al.,
2004). More and more suppliers of EAI technology
therefore focus on products that make integration of
business processes possible (Cakular and
Wijngaarden, 2002). EAI not only supports
automating activities, but also the improvement and
change of business processes (Bhatt, 2000).
Business process redesign is an important part of
integration.
The quality of the implementation project itself
also influences the ease of integration (Davenport,
1998; Lam, 2005; Fui-Hoon Nah et al., 2001;
Sammon and Adam, 2005).
Therefore to be able to indicate complexity
factors of integration, this paper discusses them
using three logical viewpoints (Klesse et al., 2005,
Lam, 2005, Sharif et al., 2004, Themistocleous et al.,
2001a, Themistocleous et al., 2001b): Technology,
Business and Project.
As described before, for every influence area
factors have been retrieved, see table 1. In the
current stage of this research it seems more
important to retrieve all factors and score them
according to their importance, than to do extensive
research into defining variables for every factor by
which a factor can be measured.
5 EMPIRICAL VALIDATION OF
THE COMPLEXITY FACTORS
5.1 Introduction
In order to determine the completeness of the list
and the relative importance of the factors expert
judgement was sought, as this seemed a suitable
source of information for this purpose.
The experts had to meet the following profile:
- Knowledge of the management of the integration
process of information systems in general ;
- Knowledge of integration of ERP solutions and
complementary IT solutions on at least one but
preferable more of the views ‘technology’,
‘business’ and ‘project’;
- To avoid emphasis on the specific circumstanced
of a single organization, they should have
different organizational (at least) and national
(preferably) backgrounds .
Experts should add factors if required, rate the
relative importance of the factors and react on
additional factors and arguments from other experts.
A large-scale survey is not suitable whereas in
general the availability of experts in this area and
willingness to participate is limited. Therefore this
research aimed at a small group of experts with
sufficient knowledge willing to participate in several
rounds in a Delphi setting.
5.2 Research Environment
Inviting experts from various international
organizations would be the ideal research setting. On
the other hand, experts should be available and being
able to understand each other’s contribution, which
pleads for a selection from a single organization. As
a compromise we selected experts from an
organization that fairly recently was created by a
merger between a number of different companies.
The survey was performed amongst experts in a
leading European special steel products company.
This organization employs 4,300 people at 16
production sites and several sales companies in
Europe and the USA. The company is in its present
form a young organization, composed of different
COMPLEXITY IMPACT FACTORS ON THE INTEGRATION PROCESS OF ERP AND NON ERP SYSTEMS - A
Basis for an Evaluation Instrument
19
independent steel companies in various segments of
the steel market. Before consolidation the different
companies had their own ERP systems, business
processes and culture. In this organization there is a
major focus on the integration of the different
information systems caused by the consolidation of
the different units. Recently merged, still variations
in organization, business processes and nationality
exist. It is reasonable to assume that the outcomes of
the survey are of equal value as a survey amongst
experts from independent organizations.
5.3 Approach
A multi round survey approach through e-mail was
in this case a practical tool because of the
geographical different locations of the participants.
Also, the participants spoke different languages. The
survey format allowed them time to understand and
formulate their answers in a non-native language.
The survey used the following procedure:
1. A first individual rating of the factors and
identification of supplementing factors by the
participants.
2. Analyzing these additional factors and
construction of the final list of factors.
3. Rating of the final list of factors by the
participants by the Delphi technique in several
rounds until changes in rating per round were
minimal.
The survey consisted of predefined questions with
predefined answers and in round one an additional
open question about supplementary factors.
5.4 Participants
The group consisted of 5 IT Managers, 1 CFO, 1 IT
software developer and 1 Information analyst. Also
the group was composed of 3 persons from Finland,
1 person from Sweden and 4 from the Netherlands.
6 RESULTS
In the first round, all participants received a
questionnaire with the view points, areas of
influence and factors. Every factor contained a
definition and a reason for inclusion as derived from
literature. The participants were invited to ad and
motivate factors they missed and rate every factor on
a 5 points Likert scale (very small to very big
influence) along with a motivation. The respondents
added one additional factor, number 27 in table 1
In the second round, all participants again
Table 1: Factors, references and scores.
Viewpoin
t
Areas of influence
ID. Factor
Technolo
gy
Application Portfolio
1. Number of applications
2. Number of different application types
Choosing the right integration technology
3. Extend to which functionality of EAI technologies
overlap
4. Quality of available integration technologies
5. Number of available and necessary (now and in the
future) pre-built adapters
6. Possibility to develop custom adapters
7. Availability, within the organization, of a tool to
select the necessary EAI technology
Information Management
8. Common layer with definitions of objects, relations
between objects and business rules
9. Strategy to handle data redundancy, replication and
inconsistence over applications
IT sophistication
10. Technical knowledge, within the organization,
concerning the current IT infrastructure
11. Technical knowledge, within the organization,
concerning the new EAI technology
Technical Goals to be met
12. Level of integration from a technical point of view
13. Quality of the new IT-infrastructure
27. Availability of new EAI technologies and/or ERP
solutions
Business
Business Goals
14. Level of integration, from a business point of view
15. Number of organizations that need to be integrated.
16. End-customer integration.
17. Business goals to be met
18. Level of external pressures that are forcing the
organization to adopt EAI
19. Stakeholders goals differ
Knowledge and skilfulness in changing the organization
20. Specific EAI knowledge and skills within the
organization.
21. Ability of an organization to adopt new technology.
22. Employee knowledge of processes
23. Willingness employees to share control & ownership
of processes
Project
Differences between EAI and traditional IT projects
24. Availability of proven EAI methods within the
organization
25. Integration of all existing applications within a
portfolio of applications rather than the selection of
development of one new application
26. Number of project owners and stakeholder groups
ICSOFT 2011 - 6th International Conference on Software and Data Technologies
20
received the questionnaire. Besides the views and
factors, it contained the summarized motivations
from the previous round as well as factor 27. Round
2 did not lead to a major change of opinions. For this
reason it was decided to stop the survey and use the
results retrieved so far, supported by the announced
unwillingness of the participants to participate in a
third round.
Table 2 shows the 5 top rated factors, while table
3 displays the 5 factors with the lowest scores, both
in descending order. The complete list of scores of
all factors after round 2 is available through the
authors.
Table 2: The 5 top rated factors.
Id Factor
15 Number of organizations that need to be integrated
1 Number of applications.
26 Number of project owners and stakeholder groups
6 Possibility to develop custom adapters.
23 Willingness of employees to share control & ownership
of processes.
Table 3: The 5 lowest rated factors.
Id Factor
7 Availability, within the organization, of a tool to select
the necessary EAI technology
24 Availability of proven EAI methods within the
organization
11 Technical knowledge, within the organization,
concerning the new EAI technology
9 Strategy to handle data redundancy, replication and
inconsistence over applications
20 Specific EAI knowledge and skills within the
organization
7 CONCLUSIONS
All complexity factors identified from literature are
confirmed by the participants in this survey.
Although not all are rated equally important, all
factors were scored at least a ‘small’ to ‘normal’
influence on complexity. However it is also
reasonable to assume that the rating will somewhat
be influenced by organization specific
characteristics. According to the participants of the
survey, clearly some factors have more influence on
complexity.
The list of the retrieved factors seems rather
comprehensive, given that only one factor was
added by the participants that was not in the original
list and that this factor was rated as having a normal
influence on complexity. This fact and that all
factors scored as relevant, suggest that the final list
is not heavily influenced by the specific
circumstances in this organization. If this would be
the case, the authors would expect an explicit
variation in the scores.
This survey confirms that integration should not
be viewed as a pure technical matter. Three out of
the five most important factors are non technical
factors. Two factors have an organizational view and
one factor a project view. The list in table 1 consists
of 5 quantitative factors (ID’s 1, 2, 5, 15 and 26) and
22 qualitative factors. This might suggest that
qualitative factors play an important role in the
complexity of integration. However the list of the 5
top rated factors shows 3 quantitative factors and 2
qualitative factors. The 2 most important factors are
quantitative factors. Also the list shows that the 3
quantitative factors belong to the 3 different
viewpoints.
The authors expect that the present list of
qualitative and quantitative factors is already a
useful instrument for organizations to determine and
value the relevant factors which influence the
complexity of their integration of ERP with non
ERP systems. It can be useful as an instrument for
recognition and structured discussion of the
important factors which influence the complexity of
integration. Usage should provide awareness of the
condition of a specific factor in a particular
organization in areas like planning, control and risk
management.
8 DISCUSSION
In this research only the relevant influence factors
have been retrieved. Relationships between factors
are not discussed although at a glance factors seem
related to each other. For instance the 3 top factors,
probably will have a high correlation. For example
the higher the number of organisations are, probably
the higher the number of applications will be. This
aspect should be addressed by further research
because this might lead to simplifying the model i.e.
reducing or condensing the number of relevant
factors.
Of course it would also be very useful for an
organization if they could match the factors to the
complexity of the integration and match this to the
integration effort. Research into finished projects
can relate their integration effort to the factors
retrieved in this research.
Finally, as the current list is a novel one
COMPLEXITY IMPACT FACTORS ON THE INTEGRATION PROCESS OF ERP AND NON ERP SYSTEMS - A
Basis for an Evaluation Instrument
21
confirmed by only 8 experts in 3 European
countries, more research should be undertaken into
the comprehensiveness the areas of interest, the
factors and the relative importance of these factors.
Nevertheless the present rated list of qualitative
factors can serve as starting point for further
research.
REFERENCES
Alshawi, S., M. Themistocleous & R. Almadani, 2004.
Integrating diverse ERP systems: a case study. Journal
of Enterprise Information Management, 17, 454 - 462.
Bhatt, G. D., 2000. An empirical examination of the
effects of information systems integration on business
process improvement. International Journal of
Operations & Production Management, 20, 1331 -
1359.
Cakular & v. Wijngaarden, 2002. Succesvolle EAI. In
Informatie, 72-76.
Davenport, T. H., 1998 Putting the enterprise into the
enterprise system. Harvard Business Review, 76,
121-+.
Esteves, J., J. Pastor & J. Casanovas, 2002. Monitoring
Business Process Redesign in ERP Implementation
Projects. Eighth Americas Conference on Information
Systems.
Fan, Y. S., W. Shi & C. Wu, 1999. Enterprise wide
application integration platform for CIMS
implementation. Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing,
10, 587-601.
Fui-Hoon Nah, F., J. Lee-Shang Lau & J. Kuang, 2001.
Critical factors for successful implementation of
enterprise systems. Business Process Management
Journal 7, 285 - 296
Gibson, N., C. P. Holland & B. Light, 1999. Enterprise
Resource Planning: A Business Approach to Systems
Development. Proceedings of the 32
nd
Hawaii Inter-
national Conference on System Sciences - 1999, 9.
Gulledge, T., 2006. What is integration? Industrial
Management & Data Systems, 106, 5 - 20.
Klaus, H., M. Rosemann & G. G. Gable, 2000. What is
ERP? Information Systems Frontiers, 2, 141-162.
Klesse, M., F. Wortmann & J. Schelp, 2005. Success
factors for application integration.
Wirtschaftsinformatik, 47, 259-267.
Koch, C., 2001. BPR and ERP: Realising a vision of
process with IT. Business Process Management
Journal, 7, 258.
Lam, W., 2005. Investigating success factors in enterprise
application integration: a case-driven analysis.
European Journal of Information Systems, 14, 175-
187.
Lemahieu, W., M. Snoeck & C. Michiels, 2003. An
enterprise layer-based approach to application service
integration. Business Process Management Journal, 9,
760 - 775.
Light, B., C. P. Holland & K. Wills, 2001. ERP and best
of breed: a comparative analysis. Business Process
Management Journal, 7, 216 - 224.
Sammon, D. & F. Adam, 2005 Towards a model of
organisational prerequisites for enterprise-wide
systems integration: Examining ERP and data
warehousing. Journal of Enterprise Information
Management, 18, 458 - 470.
Sharif, A. M., T. Elliman, P. E. D. Love & A. Badii, 2004.
Integrating the IS with the enterprise: key EAI
research challenges. Journal of Enterprise Information
Management, 17
Sharif, A. M., Z. Irani & P. E. D. Love, 2005. Integrating
ERP using EAI: a model for post hoc evaluation.
European Journal of Information Systems, 14, 162-
174.
Themistocleous, M. & Z. Irani, 2002. Novel taxonomy for
application integration. Benchmarking: An
International Journal, 9, 154 - 165.
Themistocleous, M., Z. Irani & P. E. D. Love, 2004.
Evaluating the integration of supply chain information
systems: A case study. European Journal of
Operational Research, 159, 393-405.
Themistocleous, M., Z. Irani & R. M. O´Keefe, 2001a.
Benchmarking the benefits and barriers of application
integration. Benchmarking: An International Journal,
8, 317 - 331.
Themistocleous, M., Z. Irani & R. M. O´Keefe, 2001b.
ERP and application integration: Exploratory survey.
Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 7, 195-
204.
ICSOFT 2011 - 6th International Conference on Software and Data Technologies
22