It must be stressed that failing to match business processes with a company’s ERP system can derail even the best-run firms. Managers and employees must be able to assess the technological and business process issues involved with specific ERP applications. It is well known that overcoming employee resistance can be a critical factor for the successful completion of a project and top management must provide leadership for all changes, efforts, objections and disagreements that arise in the process of reengineering and ERP implementation. The many enterprises assessed indicate that several approaches to the combination of BPR and ERP are in play and that they lead to different levels of integration. The synergy created and manifested by ERP and BPR, along with new employee energy can provide organizations with unprecedented capabilities they never envisioned prior to ERP implementations. Ahmed also points out that evidence of practical experiences of success of business process change related programs require ongoing effort for at least three to five years, even reaching time frames of around 10-20 years for the realization of full potential. Consequently, the focus of ERP implementations has shifted from matching business processes with the ERP system to developing “knowledge-workers” that can quickly understand and work with redesigned processes and realize the ERP-enabled benefits.
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