Enterprise Resource Planning - Real blessing or a Blessing in Disguise : An Exploration of the Contextual Factors in Public Sector

Abstract: Information systems have always been in a prime focus in organizations in both local (Pakistani) and global environment. Now the race of being the best through Information Systems has created its importance in public sector organizations to meet the global challenges. Public sector organizations have been facing problems in different segments of technology adoption especially in ERP projects. ERP adoption/implementation projects in public sector organizations still encounter major setbacks in terms of partly/completely success/failure. Cultural and other social barriers have been resistant in technology adoption in Pakistan. Now in the case of big ERP adoptions the contextual factors must be identified and addressed. The paper investigates the reasons of success or failure by addressing nature of complexities regarding different contextual factors. The study includes a sample of Pakistan s four public sector organizations. The sample of this four organizations includes two organizations (Type-A) i.e. Oil & Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) and National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) where ERP has been successfully implemented and other two (Type-B) i.e. Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation Limited (PTCL), Higher Education Commission (HEC) where ERP implementation is in progress. The findings address the contextual factors i.e. cultural, environmental & political changes which have a variable impact on ERP systems adoption/implementation in addition to Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). Paper also briefly includes analysis of gaps between pre & post ERP implementation scenarios.