Capturing and Comprehending the Behavioral/Dynamical Interactions within an ERP Implementation

Abstract

The behavioral and dynamic implications of an ERP deployment are, to say the least, not well understood. Getting the switches set to enable the ERP software to go live is tedious. But the difficult part is understanding all of the dynamic interactions that accrue as a consequence. Connectionist and causal models are proposed in this article to facilitate an understanding of the dynamics and to enable control of the information-enhanced processes to take place. The connectionist model facilitates the understanding of the dynamic behavioral implications of the larger ERP implementation installation per se. The underlying connectionist model will observe and detect information transfers and workflow. Once maps of the total infrastructure are determined by the models, an analyst can suggest improvements. The models become decision support aids for process analysts in situations where ideal process flows/information transfers are sought.