A taxonomy of players and activities across the ERP project life cycle

An important problem in probabilistic description is to understand who are the key players, which activities associated with enterprise system implementations are important, and when their effect is most prevalent across the IT development stages. Using an information theory approach, we analyze the fit between their importance, as noted in the current literature, and the experiences reported by a cross-section of 116 organizations that completed an enterprise system implementation experience. Our results suggest that the early literature- and case-based research on enterprise systems does not take into account, the importance of several key variables. These findings provide guidance to managers on how best to utilize their limited resources by employing such factors at the stage in the project's life cycle when they will have the greatest impact. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.