Enterprise Systems Education: Where Are We? Where Are We Going?

Journal of Information Systems Education, Fall 2004 by Antonucci, Yvonne Lederer, Corbitt, Gail, Stewart, Glenn, Harris, Albert L

ABSTRACT

Enterprise systems are used by companies worldwide. As the importance of enterprise systems has increased in the corporate world, so have their importance increased in IS education. As a result, enterprise systems education impacts the IS curriculum of many universities. The maturity of enterprise systems education has developed over the years, however, when compared to other maturity models, enterprise systems education has a long way to go. As part of its mission to support Information Systems (IS) education, JISE is pleased to publish this special issue devoted to enterprise systems education. A Teaching Tip, a Teaching Case, and eight papers on varying enterprise systems education topics are presented.

Keywords: ERP, enterprise systems, maturity model

1. INTRODUCTION

Industries worldwide have continued to invest in enterprise systems and the expansion of these systems to sustain a competitive advantage. As educators, we must bring the issues and practices of industry to the classroom. The implementation of enterprise systems curricula over the past 8-10 years in universities worldwide has been full of ups and downs. While some universities seem to flourish with the implementation of enterprise systems education, many are floundering. It is clear that universities worldwide are in varying stages of enterprise systems education deployment. In this paper we examine the industry maturity models and provide a framework of an enterprise systems education maturity model. We also introduce the next wave of enterprise systems education based on industry trends.

2. MATURITY MODELS

While the concepts that underlie Enterprise-wide systems or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems can be traced back to at least 1965, their wide use in business is only about 15 years old. In an article by Robert Head, the conceptual foundation of a "management information system" that had all the data needed by an organization was really the framework of what is now called ERP systems [Head 1967]. Head talked about the database "soup in which numerous data elements are floating around..." (Head, 1967, p.23). At the time it was thought that the number of data elements in a particular organization that constitutes the ERP system was in the hundreds or thousands, it was not until the 1980s that data base products evolved to a place where what turned out to be millions of data elements could be stored and not until the early 1990s that full ERP systems were commercially viable.

Today the concepts of ERP, capability, or process maturity are continually being utilized in many aspects of organizations as a means of assessment and as part of a framework for improvement (Fraser et al., 2002). The notion of measuring an organization's maturity with respect to IT has been the subject of academic papers for about as long as people have been writing about integrated enterprise systems. In 1974 Nolan and Gibson presented the first maturity model based on IT expenditures (Gibson and Nolan, 1974). The four-stage model classified systems into categories that more or less mirrored the changes in the IT industry from 1960 into the mid-1970s (Corbitt and Connolly, 2004). Nolan modified his model in 1979 to include 6 stages (Nolan, 1979)

The premise is that by understanding a maturity model, organizations can use this to help not only assess their current maturity level but also help efficiently advance them to a higher level of maturity. The ERP Maturity model described by Holland and Light (2001) has three phases (see Figure 1). Stage 1 indicates the initial planning of an ERP system implementation while managing existing legacy systems. Stage 2 represents a post ERP implementation where there is eventually widespread adoption of the ERP system throughout the organization. When an organization advances into Stage 3, there is evidence of strategic use of the core ERP system and in addition ERP data is extended to the utilization of value added functionality and capabilities such as Supply Chain Management or Customer Relationship Management.

A historical analysis of organizational evolution of ERP systems indicates changes in industry focus over time (see Figure 2). Originally ERP systems allowed organizations to track the business. As organizations matured in their use of ERP systems, they were able to use the systems to understand the business, and eventually improve the business with a focus on business processes. Extensions to ERP systems known as ERPII (as coined by the Gartner Group), gave organizations the ability to predict the business. While ERP allows organizations to track, understand, and improve internally, ERP II provides an extension to inter-organizational environments.

Currently the challenge is to capture the necessary data and analyze it to advance to a predictive inter-organizational maturity level, enabling organizations to not only analyze, but to quickly react to indicators and improve interorganizational value chains, thereby sustaining a continued competitive advantage. While the ERP system remains at the core, the focus shifts from the system to the business processes. This is the basis of the Process Maturity Model, which is based on the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute. This model contains five stages of process awareness and automation; (BPTrends 2004; Mentisys, Inc., 2003);