The Long Conversation:
LEARNING HOW TO MASTER ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS

Oswaldo Lorenzo Peter Kawalek Boumediene Ramdani

cquiring large-scale Enterprise Systems (ESs) such as SAP or Oracle is typically a huge investment for any firm. The cost of an ES with sophisticated multi-modules can run into the millions of dollars. A study of total costs of ES ownership by the Aberdeen Group reveals that companies with turnovers between $1–$5 billion pay an average of $5,920,785, and companies with turnovers between $50 and 100 million pay an average of $1,081,869 for a complete ES package, which includes the configuration and implementation of software, after-sales service, and maintenance.1 ESs promise much, but are expensive, complex, and threaten the status quo of relationships in an organization. Hence implementation is frequently fraught with difficulties. Change management costs can mount as old systems are discarded or modified, staff is trained, old processes are set aside and new procedures adopted. Subsequently, organizations seek a rapid return on their investment by designing project plans that minimize risk. In the early years, few ES implementations lived up to their expectations and today many organizations continue to struggle to achieve the results expected and desired from ESs. How can companies reach a point where their expectations are met or exceeded? Far from offering a quick fix, or providing a fast track to an order of magnitude improvement, ESs are better understood through a slow and diligent learning process. They present employees with an opportunity to relearn daily tasks that they had hitherto thought routine as well as to forge new bonds and to share new insights in the process. Empirical studies reported here suggest that it can take up to six years from the adoption of an ES project to reach the point at which organizations report that they have