Best practice business processes in ERP systems and SMEs

The ability of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to integrate processes and information and to deliver automation and consistent execution of processes across the enterprise is important not only to larger corporations, but also for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Considering the problems and limitations of SMEs in the adoption of IT-enabled innovations, ERP software vendors argue that the pre-configured best practice processes embedded in their software solutions specially designed for SMEs will deliver cost effective and performance enhancing software solutions. This paper argues that there is no such thing as 'best practice' business processes particularly in the context of SMEs. The flexibility offered by the ERP systems software providers is before the implementation and the system is in fact rigid after the implementation. It contends that the adoption of ERP systems by the SMEs is dependent upon other factors such as complexity of business operations, need for integration of information. and systems, and organizational factors.