A citizen benefit perspective of municipal enterprise resource planning systems

Abstract

Over the past three decades, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have been adopted by businesses with increasing frequency to improve organisational efficiencies and to remedy fragmentation of information systems across company functions. In the public sector as well, many governments, especially at national and regional levels, have also been recognising the benefits of ERP systems. This paper reports on a case study of a large metropolitan municipality. Qualitative methodologies were employed in the form of in-depth interviews amongst selected respondents in the selected case. The study used hermeneutical principles of qualitative data analysis to elicit the findings. The research determined that, in addition to improving internal business processes, there are clear benefits to the citizen when public institutes like municipalities implement ERP systems. This study identifies a number of resultant and potential benefits as well as the management practices that are being employed by the municipal management to ensure maximum ERP system benefit to the citizens. These are, in fact, both indirect benefits which are found generically in any ERP system as well as direct benefits to citizens that are visible. The findings indicate that ERP systems promote financial sustainability, lowers overall ICT operational costs, reduce communication costs, enables an efficient budget and results in better overall governance of local governments.