Towards Business Case considerations for Small to Medium-sized Enterprises adopting Enterprise Resource Planning systems: A literature review

The adoption of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems by Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) has been marked with a high rate of failure in developing countries. Previous studies have estimated the failure rate of ERP implementations to be between 40 to 60%. The failure rate is concerning since SMEs contribute to the development of many nations particularly in Africa. To address this concern, this study as a first step, set out to integrate various business case elements from the academic literature, distilling a set of considerations which SMEs adopting ERP systems can use to develop realistic business cases. The study uses a general inductive approach to analyse the academic literature as a secondary data source. The review looks at the broad area of IT business cases drilling down one way to ERP business cases and then the other way to SME IT business cases and finally to ERP SME business cases. The final result is a description and a summary of condensed extensive business case considerations for SMEs adopting an ERP system. The practical contribution of the paper is that SMEs adopting ERP systems may use the proposed framework to build realistic business cases thereby increasing their chances of implementing ERP systems successfully. Secondly, the study lays a foundation for further research on business case considerations for SMEs adopting ERP systems and the subsequent confirmation of the proposed framework to enhance the development of better business cases.