Seddon et al./Key Factors Affecting Organizational Benefits RESEARCH ARTICLE A MULTI-PROJECT MODEL OF KEY FACTORS AFFECTING ORGANIZATIONAL BENEFITS FROM ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS 1 By: Peter B. Seddon Department of Information Systems University of Melbourne Victoria 3010 AUSTRALIA p.seddon@unimelb.edu.au Cheryl Calvert Corporate Business Systems Monash University Victoria 3800 AUSTRALIA Cheryl.Calvert@adm.monash.edu.au Song Yang Department of Information Systems University of Melbourne Victoria 3010 AUSTRALIA yanssy1@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au 1 Carol Saunders was the accepting senior editor for this paper. The appendices for this paper are are located in the “Online Supplements” section of the MIS Quarterly’s website (http://www.misq.org). This article contains references to the products of SAP AG. SAP, R/3, SAP NetWeaver, Duet, PartnerEdge, ByDesign, Clear Enterprise, SAP Business Objects Explorer, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and other countries. Business Objects and Business Objects logos, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Crystal Decisions, Web Intelligence, Xcelsius, and other Business Objects products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos or trademarks are registered trademarks of SAP France in the United States and other countries. SAP AG is neither the author nor the publisher of this publication and is not responsible for its content. SAP Group shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP Group products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Abstract This paper develops a long-term, multi-project model of fac- tors affecting organizational benefits from enterprise systems (ES), then reports a preliminary test of the model. In the shorter-term half of the model, it is hypothesized that once a system has gone live, two factors, namely functional fit and overcoming organizational inertia, drive organizational bene- fits flowing from each major ES improvement project. The importance of these factors may vary from project to project. In the long-term half of the model, it is hypothesized that four additional factors, namely integration, process optimization, improved access to information, and on-going major ES business improvement projects, drive organizational benefits from ES over the long term. Preliminary tests of the model were conducted using data from 126 customer presentations from SAP’s 2003 and 2005 Sapphire U.S. conferences. All six factors were found to be important in explaining variance in organizational benefits from enterprise systems from the perspective of senior management. Keywords: Enterprise system success, packaged software, functional fit, overcoming organizational inertia, change man- agement, IS implementation, IS project management, integra- tion, process optimization, improved access to information Introduction Enterprise systems are large-scale, real-time, integrated application-software packages that use the computational, data storage, and data transmission power of modern informa- tion technology to support processes, information flows, reporting, and business analytics within and between complex organizations. Because they impound deep knowledge of MIS Quarterly Vol. 34 No. 2 pp. 305-328/June 2010 305