Prioritization of enterprise resource planning systems criteria: Focusing on construction industry

Many organizations use integrated management systems, which are better known as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. The use of these systems has led to the discussion of methods to evaluate them, taking into account multiple perceptions and evaluation criteria. First, based on a review of the literature regarding the implementation and application of multi-criteria models for the evaluation of ERP systems, a set of ERP system selection criteria and subcriteria is proposed for the application of ERP to companies in the construction industry, because there is a greater need to support the Brazilian civil construction organizations, where there is shortage of this type of system. Subsequently, after the validation of these criteria by a group of information technology (IT) specialists, 79 respondents drawn mainly from the construction industry and IT participated in a field study to examine their perceptions of the importance of these criteria. The study showed that the financial, business and software criteria were most important for the respondents. In addition, the importance of the subcriteria of each criteria group was also presented to assist decision makers when selecting ERP systems. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V.