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THE IMPORTANCE OF END-USER EDUCATION IN

ERP IMPLEMENTATIONS: WHEN WILL WE LEARN?

A paper written and presented by Can!do Consulting in March 2004

THE IMPORTANCE OF END-USER EDUCATION IN ERP IMPLEMENTATION: WHEN WILL WE LEARN? (A paper written and presented by Can!do Consulting in March 2004) Introduction It almost goes without saying that end-user training is a critical success factor in ERP implementations, said Dr Louise Whittaker, senior lecturer in Information Management at Wits Business School. Yet remarkably, multimillion rand implementation projects continue to be threatened by inadequate planning and provision for this most fundamental final step. A review of recent research into ERP system implementations reveals that warnings of the vital importance of end-user education continue to fall on deaf ears. End-user education: Beating a familiar drum A tool is only as good as the person who wields it may be a well-used axiom but, rather incredibly, this truth is often overlooked in the ERP market. Eager to reap the promised rewards of seamless integration of all the information flowing through an enterprise, companies worldwide are spending billions of dollars on software (the ERP market is soon expected to top $50-billion annually) and up to seven times that on implementation experts. Yet when it comes to training the people who will ultimately use these powerful new tools, companies continue to cut corners and then wonder why the promised productivity and efficiency gains remain elusive at best or the entire implementation is threatened at worst. The importance of end-user education in ERP implementations is not merely a selfevident truth. Some of the earliest research into information system implementations provided empirical evidence of the importance of this step in the process. In their case study of client/server success in three companies in 1997, Subramanian and Lacity identified six critical success factors in the client/server projects they studied. Third on the list after top management support and business process redesign was the
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provision of adequate training, support and maintenance. Also on the list was the inclusion of end-users on the development team to facilitate end-user acceptance and ease-of-use. Two years later Bingi, Sharma and Godla (1999) confirmed these earlier findings and identified five primary success factors: 1. top management support, 2. reengineering of existing processes, 3. integration of the ERP with other business information systems, 4. selection and management of consultants and employees 5. training of employees on the new system. In an article entitled ERP Training Stinks in CIO Magazine in June 2000, author Malcolm Wheatley identified poor training as the smoking gun of ERP failures. Experts reckon theyve found the smoking gun [of costly-but-underwhelming implementations]: poor training. Not the technical training of the core team of people who are installing the software but the education of the broad user community of managers and employees who are supposed to actually run the business with it, wrote Wheatley (2000). Quoting Blanton Godfrey, chairman and CEO of the Juran Institute, a Connecticut-based consultancy, he said the sole variable that characterises the lucky 10% to 15% of successful implementations is better training. Also quoted in the article, Cushing Anderson, a senior research analyst with Framingham, summed it up this way: The better the training, the faster youll see the business metrics move in the direction youre looking for (Wheatley, 2000). In 2000, Jerry Kanter, director of the Center for Information Management Studies at Babson College in Massachusetts noted in an article in Information Systems Management that people are the hidden costs of ERP implementations. [Hidden costs] is the productive time people spend talking to their peers and to the help desk, hopefully to resolve a host of operating problems, according to Kanter (2000:76). He said reliable research had estimated that hidden costs, if measured by the time during which production workers are not engaged in productive work, can be two-and-ahalf times the known hardware and software costs. To ensure system success, said Kanter (2000:75), there must be a clear vision of the technical experience and educational sophistication of the intended users. If a
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systemstretches the technical abilities of the end user, this discrepancy must be addressed during training and implementation.

That was then: What about now? Horror stories of costly implementation failures abounded in the 1990s. High profile abandoned ERP implementations included companies such as FoxMeyer Drug, Mobil Europe, Dell Computer, Applied Materials and Dow Chemicals. Some of the reasons for the failures were technical, others operational and still others strategic. In a case study on client/server failure in the mid-1990s, Hoffman and Klepper (2000:40) found that poor staffing and training was one of the factors leading to the failure of the new system. In response to time pressures to complete the project, note Hoffman and Klepper (2000:40), information systems management gave project staff only one week of training in the new tools. The poorly trained and inexperienced internal staff never jelled as a team with the outside consultants, leading to communication problems and conflicts. Ten years on and hundreds of implementations later, you would expect many of these early teething problems to have been resolved. Yet occasional outright failure and, more commonly, disappointment with ERP systems still remain today. And perhaps not surprisingly it is the usual suspect that is to blame for implementation problems: poor training. A recent survey of 30 manufacturing firms concerning ERP implementation by academics from Winona State University in Minnesota showed that far and away the number one cause of implementation problems was a lack of ERP training and education for affected employees (Duplaga & Astani, 2003: 71).IT and other personnel at the 30 large, medium and small companies were asked to rate the extent to which several issues caused problems in ERP implementation on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from not at all (1) to a great extent (5). The results are shown in the following table:

Small/Medium Problem Lack of ERP training and education for affected employees Lack of in-house expertise in ERP Lack of clear goals for ERP effort Lack of companywide support and involvement Lack of data accuracy Lack of top management commitment and support Lack of communication to users Lack of project management strategy to mange process Lack of software vendor support Unsuitability of hardware and/or software Attempting the implementation without any outside help Abdicating implementation responsibility Companies Mean Median 3.43 2.71 2.71 2.64 2.57 2.36 2.29 2.29 2.14 2.00 2.00 1.92 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.5 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 1.5 1.5 1.0 1.0 Mode 4 3 2 2 2 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 Mean 3.07 3.00 1.93 2.75 2.73 2.50 2.27 2.00 2.07 1.93 1.75 1.86 2.00

Large Companies Median Mode 3.0 3.0 2.0 3.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 1.0 1.5 2.0 4 3 1 3 2 1 2 2 1 2 1 1 2

to consultants Lack of formal implementation plan 1.86 1.0 1 Mean: the average (sum of the responses divided by the number of respondents) Mode: the response given most frequently

Median: the centre point of the data if the responses were listed from lowest to highest

Source: Duplaga & Astani (2003)

The survey clearly shows that inadequate end-user education continues to be the primary reason for dissatisfaction with ERP implementations. It is further interesting to note that education and training is a factor in the second highest rated reason for problems, namely a lack of in-house expertise in ERP. Both these factors can be overcome by including education experts into the implementation team from an early point. Both the lack of training and lack of in-house expertise in ERP were further supported as top implementation problems in the research by responses to a followup, open-ended question. When asked how the ERP implementation process would be different if they had to do it over again, more and better training and education in ERP and more help from consultants and outside experts were the two most common responses (Duplaga & Astani, 2003: 71). Other research also conducted in 2003 showed similar mistakes. A case study conducted by Barker & Frolick (2003:45) at a major soft drink bottler showed implementation problems were caused by all the usual culprits: improper employee involvement, lack of training, inconsistent management support, and a lack of good communication. The researchers found that after spending millions of dollars to
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purchase the ERP software, the company tried cutting corners during implementation including on training. Training is not enough you need education It may come as no surprise that end-user training is the most frequently overlooked area of ERP implementations. Part of the problem is that training often receives too little of the overall budget. While the proportion of the overall project funding dedicated to training has generally risen from around 5 percent in the late 1990s to around 10 percent to 15 percent more recently, experts suggest the actual cost may be closer to 30 percent (Wheatley, 2000). Another problem lies in the attitude of companies toward training. Dan Klein, at the time senior vice president of education services at PeopleSoft, remarked that too many companies treat training as a checkthe-box activity (Wheatley, 2000). Just as problematic, according to Klein, is the fact that training typically occurs at the end of the implementation cycle when activities are running late and being compressed, resulting in training being squashed in as a last minute activity (Wheatley, 2000). But perhaps the most critical problem with training is that it remains just that: training. Experts consistently agree that training forms only one part of necessary skills acquisition of end-users. Bingi, Sharma and Godla (1999:13) found that it was vital that end-user education go beyond merely the functionality of the new system to include understanding their new role in the enterprise:
Without proper training, about 30 percent to 40 percent of front-line workers will not be able to handle the demands of the new system. The people at the keyboard are now making important decisions about buying and selling important commitments of the company. They need to understand how their data affects the rest of the company. Training employees on ERP is not as simple as Excel training in which you give them a few weeks of training, put them on the job and they blunder their way through. ERP systems are extremely complex and demand rigorous training. It is difficult for trainers or consultants to pass on the knowledge to the employees in a short space of time. With ERP systems you are continuously being trained. Companies should provide opportunities to

enhance the skills of the employees by providing training opportunities on a continuous basis to meet the changing needs of the business and employees. Bingi, Sharma & Godla (1999:13)

The importance of providing education rather than simply training and including educators earlier in the implementation process was corroborated by leading Singaporean Information Management experts Soh, Kien and Tay-Yap (2000). Their research on ERP implementations in Asia showed that a knowledge gap which existed between the three key parties to the implementation process the key users, IS department personnel and the ERP vendor was hampering ERP implementation success. Quoting additional research by Hippel (1994) and Volkoff (1999), the authors argue that ERP implementations require advances in end-user knowledge acquisition:
The demand on users is not only to be competent in their business areas but also to assimilate the package functionality is some depth. They must now consciously get into the ERP software to evaluate the appropriateness of the new configured system or the alternatives adopted. Organisations can facilitate the knowledge acquisition process by budgeting for vendors to spend time educating key users about the system [and] by shifting the ERP focus training earlier in the implementation process. Soh, Kien & Tay-Yap (2000:51)

Wheatley (2000) summed up this growing consensus among researchers and experts:
The consensus that is emerging is that the training that matters isnt techy, this field shows this; this button does that training. In fact, what we normally call training is increasingly being shown to be relatively worthless. Whats called for, it seems, is an ability to figure out the underlying flow of information through the business itself.

John Conklin, then vice president and CIO of World Kitchen, says he separates training into two parts: education and training (Wheatley, 2000): Education is all the why, who and where issues. Training is the how part of the equation. And of the two, education is the much more important part.

Another important aspect of education, as noted earlier in this report, is that educators need to be involved far earlier in the project and focus their efforts not only on endusers but on middle and senior management. ERP training needs to embrace senior management and early on in the process when budgets and timescales are still fluid, argues AMR Researchs vice president Jim Shepard (Wheatley, 2000). Conclusion Despite at least 10 years of experience in implementing ERP systems since the launch of SAP R/3 and a host of research identifying critical implementation success factors, implementations of enterprise systems still frequently fail to live up to expectations. Yet the problems are almost never of a technical nature. Very rarely are there instances when its the ERP system itself the actual software that fails, notes Jim Shepard of ARM Research (Wheatley, 2000). The software does what it is supposed to. It is the users that dont. Yet it is the software vendors who are blamed when the system fails to deliver its expected returns. When an ERP project unravels or is seen not to perform well, one of the suppliers is usually chosen as the culprit, explained David Duray, at the time of writing the London-based global partner responsible for the SAP implementation business at PriceWaterhouseCoopers (Wheatley, 2000). In my experience, that is usually more of a political decision than a proper problemsource identification exercise and SAP, over the last few years, has been a popular target, he continued. Research, experience and common sense clearly show that highlighting the importance of holistic education and training for both senior management and endusers and including education experts in the process from early on can go a long way to solving the problems of ERP disappointments.

References and Bibliography Barker, T. & Frolick, M.N. (2003): ERP Implementation Failure: A Case Study, in Information Systems Management, Fall 2003, 43-49. Bingi, P., Sharma, M.K., & Godla, J.K. (1999): Critical Issues Affecting an ERP Implementation, in Information Systems Management, Summer 1999, 7-14. Davenport, T.H. (1998): Putting the Enterprise into the Enterprise System, in Harvard Business Review, July-August, 121-131. Duplaga, E.A. & Astani, M. (2003): Implementing ERP in Manufacturing, in Information Systems Management, Summer 2003, 68-75. Hippel, E.V. (1994): Sticky information and the loss of problem solving: Implications for innovation, in Management Sci., 40, 4, 429-439. Hoffman, N. & Klepper, R. (2000): Assimilating New Technologies: The role of organizational culture, in Information Systems Management, Summer 2000, 36-42. Kanter, J. (2000): Have we forgotten the fundamental IT enabler: Ease of Use, in Information Systems Management, Summer 2000, 70-77. Kumar, K. & Van Hillegersberg, J. (2000): ERP Experiences and Evolution in Communications of the ACM, April, 43, 4, 23-26. Sarker, S. & Lee, A.S. (2003): Using a case study to test the role of three key social enablers in ERP implementation, in Information & Management, 40, 813-829. Scheer, A. & Habermann, F. (2000): Making ERP a Success, in Communications of the ACM, April, 43, 4, 57-61. Soh, C., Kien, S.S. & Tay-Yap, J. (2000): Cultural Fits and Misfits: Is ERP a Universal Solution?, in Communications of the ACM, April, 43, 4, 47-51.
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Subramanian, A. & Lacity, M. (1997): Managing Client/Server Implementations: Todays Technology, Yesterdays Lessons, in Journal of Information Technology, 12. Wheatley, M. (2000): ERP Training Stinks, in CIO Magazine, 1 June 2000, http://www.cio.come/archive/060100_erp.html (accessed 17 March 2004). Whittaker, L (2004): Telephonic interview conducted on 12 March 2004.03.19 Van Everdingen, Y. Van Hillegersberg, J. & Waarts, E. (2000): ERP Adoption by European Midsize Companies, in Communications of the ACM, April, 43, 4, 27-31. Volkoff, O. (1999): Enterprise System Implementation: A process of individual metamorphosis, in Proceedings of the Academy of Management 99 Conference, Chicago, August.

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