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Maintaining ERP packaged software – A revelatory case study

  • Research Article
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Journal of Information Technology

Abstract

For many organizations, maintaining and upgrading enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems (large packaged application software) is often far more costly than the initial implementation. Systematic planning and knowledge of the fundamental maintenance processes and maintenance-related management data are required in order to effectively and efficiently administer maintenance activities. This paper reports a revelatory case study of Government Services Provider (GSP), a high-performing ERP service provider to government agencies in Australia. GSP ERP maintenance-process and maintenance-data standards are compared with the IEEE/EIA 12207 software engineering standard for custom software, also drawing upon published research, to identify how practices in the ERP context diverge from the IEEE standard. While the results show that many best practices reflected in the IEEE standard have broad relevance to software generally, divergent practices in the ERP context necessitate a shift in management focus, additional responsibilities, and different maintenance decision criteria. Study findings may provide useful guidance to practitioners, as well as input to the IEEE and other related standards.

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Notes

  1. A recent announcement suggests this figure will increase to 22% over the next 4 years from 2008 (see Prior and Shepherd, 2008).

  2. A ‘patch’ is a small update to software code that incorporates the latest changes made to the software program. It is distributed by the software vendor to its client-organizations.

  3. IEEE/EIA stands for Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and Electronic Industries Association.

  4. ISO/IEC stands for International Organization for Standardization and International Electrotechnical Commission.

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Acknowledgements

This study was partially supported by NSC 93–2416–H–155–008. We thank the reviewers for the insightful and constructive comments for improvement and clarity of the paper. Also, we thank all the case's participants for their precious time and interests in this study. Finally, we would like to acknowledge Karen Stark for proofreading several versions of the paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Management, Yuan Ze University, Chungli, Taiwan

    Celeste See-Pui Ng

  2. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

    Guy G Gable

Authors
  1. Celeste See-Pui Ng
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  2. Guy G Gable
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Celeste See-Pui Ng.

Appendices

Appendix A

See Table A1.

Table a1 Comparison between packaged software and in-house software contexts
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Appendix B

See Table B1.

Table b1 Fundamental data for modifying packaged software code
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Appendix C

See Table C1.

Table c1 Activities in IEEE/EIA 12207.0 – maintenance process and acquisition process*
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Appendix D

See Table D1.

Table d1 IEEE/EIA 12207.1 – data and information items
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Appendix E

See Table E1.

Table e1 Summary of GSP's ERP maintenance-process*
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Appendix F

See Table F1.

Table f1 GSP's ERP maintenance data
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Appendix G

See Table G1.

Table g1 GSP's ERP maintenance data description
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Ng, CP., Gable, G. Maintaining ERP packaged software – A revelatory case study. J Inf Technol 25, 65–90 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2009.8

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