Organisations and vanilla software: What do we know about ERP systems and competitive advantage?

Erik Fosser, Ole Henrik Leister, Carl Erik Moe, Mike Newman

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have become a de facto standard for integrating business functions. But an obvious question arises: if every business is using the same so-called "Vanilla" software (e.g. an SAP ERP system) what happens to the competitive advantage from implementing IT systems? If we discard our custom-built legacy systems in favour of enterprise systems do we also jettison our valued competitive advantage from IT? While for some organisations ERPs have become just a necessity for conducting business, others want to exploit them to outperform their competitors. In the last few years, researchers have begun to study the link between ERP systems and competitive advantage. This link will be the focus of this paper. We outline a framework summarizing prior research and suggest two researchable questions. A future article will develop the framework with two empirical case studies from within part of the European food industry.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication16th European Conference on Information Systems, ECIS 2008|Eur. Conf. Inf. Syst., ECIS
Place of PublicationAtlanta, Georgia
PublisherAssociation for Information Systems
Publication statusPublished - 2008
Event16th European Conference on Information Systems, ECIS 2008 - Galway
Duration: 1 Jul 2008 → …

Conference

Conference16th European Conference on Information Systems, ECIS 2008
CityGalway
Period1/07/08 → …

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