The perspective of national ERP vendors in achieving ERP project success in government organisations: a case of Saudi Arabia

Government organizations in the Gulf Cooperation Council region are governed by strict rules and regulations. In such a context, most of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects are managed by the national ERP vendors. The aim of this paper is to explore Key Influencing Factors (KIFs) from the perspective of national ERP vendors throughout pre-implementation and during implementation of ERP projects. This research specifically focuses on the ERP implementations in government organizations in the Gulf Cooperation Council region. To achieve research objectives, we conducted a mixed methods study on 10 national ERP vendors involved in government sector projects in Saudi Arabia – the country which represents a 90% market share in Gulf Cooperation Council region. KIFs were identified through in-depth group interviews and prioritized using a multi-criteria decision analysis method (i.e. Analytic Hierarchy Process – AHP). Findings suggested a list of KIFs (15) that are grouped into four main categories namely sponsors and leadership, IT capabilities, change management, and project management. The prioritization of the KIFs by means of the AHP method reveals the ERP capabilities and the stakeholder managers to be the most important factors, and user orientation and ERP-business alignment to be the least important ones. Findings of this study would extend the knowledge of ERP implementations from the vendor perspective in the government sector; and propose a set of clearly understood and prioritized KIFs for practitioners to develop strategies appropriate for ERP implementation interventions.