Application of emerging technologies in ERP implementation in Indian manufacturing enterprises: an exploratory analysis of strategic benefits

Manufacturing "smart connected products" and building "factories of future" are need of the hour in global manufacturing arena, which is forcing enterprise decision makers to develop deeper insight in relevance of emerging technologies in enterprise resource planning (ERP) such as mobility, cloud computing, analytics, social network computing and Internet of Things (IoT) to leverage them for strategic benefit and competitive advantage. In this paper, we explore strategic engagement of these technologies in manufacturing enterprises. We conducted exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of the benefits and studied their impact on four objective indicator areas such as employee, process, customer, and finance. We used IBM SPSS to perform EFA on the response data from questionnaire survey to identify critical benefit factors and beneficiary objective indicators. We compared our work with other research findings. This work will help practitioners develop better insight and decisiveness for investing in advanced technologies in pursuit of manufacturing excellence. For academia, the work will open new research directions.