SSM approach to realizing emancipatory ideals in ERP implementation

Organizations implement Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems seeking to integrate functional units, standardize business processes and enhance organizational efficiencies. Although several millions of dollars are spent in implementing ERP systems, most of these systems fail. As ERP systems are implemented in complex environments with extensive social and organizational interactions leading to dramatic changes in the organizational structures and business processes, two critical success factors in ERP implementation are user involvement and effective project communication. Although Checkland's soft systems (SSM) methodology is a proven tool for encouraging user participation, it does not fully embrace emancipation. In this paper, we reformulate SSM to incorporate emancipatory ideals to enhance project communication during ERP implementation. The emancipatory approach developed in this paper is suitable for the requirement specification phase of ERP implementation. The approach can enhance systems implementation practice and presents an opportunity for a new research stream in method engineering for ERP systems.