This week, you learned about enterprise systems. These systems are designed to solve several accounting problems, but they do not always work as intended. The second Application for this week will give you the opportunity to analyze situations in which organizations use these programs effectively, and some other instances in which the programs failed to solve the intended problems.

Read the Davenport and Nicolaou articles. Answer the following questions:

• Discuss the major problems these sources identify that enterprise systems are designed to solve.
• What are some of the factors that contribute to implementation failure?
• Compare and contrast the critical success and failure factors of the two companies described in the Nicolaou article.

References

Nicolaou, A. (2004.) Quality of postimplementation review for enterprise resource planning systems.International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 5(1), 25-49.

Davenport, T. (1998).Putting the enterprise into the enterprise system.Harvard Business Review, 76,(4), 121-131