ERP System Total Cost of Implementation in Slovak and Slovenian Companies

Abstract:

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system implementation is probably the most laborious and rather costly part of the ERP system life-cycle. The paper provides a percentage structure of total cost of implementation (TCI) from End-user Company’s perspective. It should be of interest to companies planning to implement ERP systems, since literature suggests that TCI can be 3-5 times higher than the software license alone. TCI is, for purpose of this paper, split into the following four parts: software license, programming of changes, organizational implementation, and hardware costs. ERP systems used to be a domain of large companies but there is a still increasing number of small and middle enterprises (SMEs) adopting them as well. Based on research done in Slovenia and Slovakia, the impact of the different company size, the country, existence of formal information strategy, representation of the IT department on the board level, and turnover growth on individual parts of TCI is analyzed and findings are discussed.