ERP software is one of costly and crucial projects for business investment. It is known that nowadays Enterprises can rarely afford to implement long-term projects, in most cases the duration of implementation varies from 34 months (automation of individual store retail chain) and 1-1.5 years when it comes to big projects. Only successful combination of analytical tools and methodologies will allow the project to realize and implement ERP-solutions for commercial enterprises on time and according to set business requirements. This paper proposes a practical assessment model which applies both the fuzzy analytic logic approach and the Expert Judgment method to evaluate whether the ERP software implementation project has succeeded or not.
Today it is especially important for Ukrainian Enterprises to be capable to analyze all the environmental aspects within they operate and be able to plan all needed resources with the most possible accuracy. To gain such competitive advantages within changing economy and unstable markets, for particular Enterprise is not enough just to have the most modern production lines or good educated personnel it also requires to possess some advanced technologies and modern information management systems that will quickly allow to react and adapt all the further changes. That is why more and more Enterprises in Ukraine from different sectors of economy are choosing to implement the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
ERP plays an important role to integrate organization's information and functions
in all areas of enterprise activities and within the variety of departments and finally
results in successful operation on the market. However ERP implementation as a
project itself is costly and time consuming, it also can lead to loss of many valuable
resources of the company in case of wrong approached and not efficient way of
implementation. So it is critically important for the Enterprises to understand and clearly
realize all the value achieved from ERP initiative [
Many factors are essential in determining the efficiency of the ERP projects. Since
most of these factors are qualitative and relations between them are very complicated,
determining their exact quantitative values is quiet difficult. Using the combined
methods of Expert Judgment and Fuzzy logic can be helpful to simplify the
calculations and finally leads to a more precise result to determine generalized efficiency
value of the implemented ERP-project. In this research, we intended to gather optimal
KPIs values from different Enterprise activities and departments based on Experts
Judgment data and design a combined Fuzzy Model to assess the efficiency for
ERPproject [
The most common aspects and issues related to ERP systems development and
implementation methods of ERP-projects seems to be widely discovered observed and
investigated in works of many foreign as well as Ukrainian researches and scientists
[
The main aim of the paper is to present a model for evaluating the effectiveness of ERP-project implemented on the markets of underdeveloped economic systems with involves a combination of fuzzy logic and expert judgment methods. Because the initial data for measuring the effectiveness of ERP-project is mostly inaccurate and variable so the use of fuzzy logic techniques to enhance the data gathered from the expert is really feasible here. 3
In order to develop the model for the assessment of ERP-project efficiency first of all
it was conducted a set of related Expert Judgment questionnaires sessions, for the
proposed assessment methods and optimal performance indicators or key performance
indicators (KPI) values, in other words KPI is a type of performance measurement.
An organization may use KPIs to evaluate its success, or to evaluate the success of a
particular activity in which it is engaged. Sometimes success is defined in terms of
making progress toward strategic goals, but often success is simply the repeated,
periodic achievement of some level of operational goal (e.g. zero defects, 10/10 customer
satisfaction, etc. Accordingly, choosing the right KPIs relies upon a good
understanding of what is important to the organization [
Determination of further scope of KPIs and the major ERP success factors also is
based on variety international consulting agencies reports KPIs values, and ERP-projects
statistics obtained from such reports was additionally verified with the involved experts
[
As the result it has been allocated four main groups of indicators: 1) X - performance "increase group of KPIs" (the actual value of which increased for the Enterprise after ERP implementation), 2) Y - values "reduce group of KPIs" (the value of which decreased for the Enterprise after ERP implementation) 3) W – project financial and investments indicators. 4) Z - Generally optimized qualitative KPIs for different process aspects within Enterprise.
To be able assess the effectiveness of ERP-project we developed a structural combined model (depicted on Fig. 1). The model contains of methodological approaches and structure of key performance indicators to determine the effectiveness of ERPproject. Summarized decision tree inference, which is presented at the bottom of the model, reflects the hierarchy of input variables.
Developing a questionnaire for determining the Fuzzy (if-then) Rules with respect to the three optimal KPIs values obtained from Experts as inputs and ERP project efficient value as output. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed and they were distributed among the ERP practitioners. Fuzzy rules as the basis for determination of the conditions of the company KPIs have been formed and entered into Fuzzy system through MATLAB software.
Currently there are variety of software tools and system for applying the fuzzy logic calculations available on the market (CubiCalc 2.0 RTC, CubiQuick, FIDE, Flex Tool, FuziCalc, FuzzyTECH, JFS, MATLAB - Fuzzy Logic Toolbox, RuleMaker etc). Each of these products has its own strengths and weaknesses, however as software platform for our research it was decided to go with MATLAB Fuzzy Logic Toolbox (FLT) as most appropriate tool in particular because of the integrated nature of the MATLAB environment that also provides functions, applications, and a simulative block for analyzing, designing, and simulating systems based on fuzzy logic, widely used not only in academic and research institutions but by industrial enterprises as well.
To determine the value of each factor, different questionnaire was prepared to collect related information for the KPIs values. Also validity and reliability of mentioned questionnaire was confirmed and it was distributed among managers and experts in that domain. Calculated means obtained from questionnaire, results has been inputted to the Fuzzy System (see fig. 2). Final results were analyzed and the efficiency of the implemented ERP project was determined by this software. To design a Fuzzy system by MATLAB following: X, Y, Z, W are lingual values that also represents an organizational major KPIs groups and E is the lingual value of summarized project Efficiency (see fig. 3 and fig. 4). Proposed approach and model of determining the efficiency level of the implemented ERP-project with fuzzy logic can be used by variety of ERP practitioners, project managers, top management personnel of Enterprises that implements ERP-system for advanced analysis of the actual project results. Fuzzy rules should be further validated and formed by consulting with ERP practitioners and their results will be entered into knowledge base of Fuzzy system. Methods of fuzzy logic computing combined with provided expert judgment aimed optimize the speed of the decision-making on project efficiency level and simultaneously provide more accurate assessment abilities.