Customer Reviews

Mission Critical: Realizing the Promise of Enterprise Systems

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Davenport presented his experience and opinion in one medium-size book (300 pages), covered almost every aspects of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), which he called it Enterprise System (ES). This book is intended for both practitioners and students, and I found it serves its objectives. Starting with the definition, advantages/disadvantages, implementation, strategic integration, Information Technology (IT), business process, managing Supply Chain with ERP, and future of ERP in organization. The topics are the most popular questions in ERP decision, implementation, and continuous improvement. I would rate this book at five stars; however, there are something that I put four stars for this book -as follows: 1) Although the topics are hot and referred to many business cases, the organization of each chapter is terrible. I got lost several times in chapter or between chapters. 2) Each chapter referes back-and-forth to other chapters, which is quite useful for further reference. I, however, found they are too many referals. Again, this makes almost every chapters are not much different than others. Except for the book organization, this book is quite good for its content. I wish Davenport may consider to re-organize the second edition of this book or his new book. His knowledge in this area is exceptional, only it's required lots of organized. This book offers many excellent points of "after-ERP", which is rarely found in most ERP books. Good but not great book. Therefore, this is not the single book if you plan to get only one. You may consider O'Leary's book (ISBN 0521791529) or Brady et al. (ISBN 0619015934), if you are new to ERP and get Davenport's book for supplement.

Davenport does a brilliant job of explaining what enterprise systems are and what they can accomplish in any organization. He suggests, however, that they are worthless "unless they lead to better information or better ways of doing business. I think that enterprise systems are without doubt an impressive technical feat, but I am primarily concerned that organizations get business value from them." Throughout his book, he addresses key issues such as these:

1. What enterprise systems are and why they are important

2. The promise and the perils involved

3. How to decide whether or not to implement enterprise systems

4. How to integrate enterprise systems with strategy and organizational structure

5. How to integrate enterprise systems with business processes and information

6. How to achieve value while implementing enterprise systems

7. How to transform the practice of management with enterprise systems

8. How to use enterprise systems to manage the supply chain

9. The future of ES-enabled organizations

As Davenport explains in Chapter 1, "Enterprise systems offer the first great opportunity to achieve true connectivity, a state in which everyone knows what everyone else is doing in the business all over the world at the same time. And because they represent the first great opportunity for connectivity, they pose one of the greatest threats to the status quo that companies have ever faced." Hence the importance of one of the the book's most valuable sections, the Appendix, in which Davenport provides "A Technical Overview of Enterprise Systems." Those who feel threatened by an enterprise system will seize any and all opportunities to point out its technical flaws. At best, enterprise systems are complex, difficult to install, and inflexible. However, Davenport points out, they "will remain the most capable, integrated systems in the history of the world. They may have their flaws, but they are also the answer to our information systems prayers." I agree.

With this title, I expected something related to complex issues on design, implementation, integration and operation of rea-life information systems. For me, this book was a dissapointment. At least, the title is misleading. By "enterprise system", the author means Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) packages such as SAP and Baan, and most of the contents are about very basic overview on ERP. This book should be titled as "Managers' Guide to ERP", and could be useful for uninitiated managers who want to know what major ERP products there are.

If you want to know how to implement an enterprise system, this is not the book to rely upon. But if you want an introduction to ERPs and how they can impact your organization, make this the first book you read. Davenport does a good job of laying "the first brick" in your continuing education process in regards to ERPs. It is easy to understand and gives real world examples of benefits and pitfalls of different implementation methods and gives the reader a fair view of the magnitude of an ERP project. Not the ERP bible, but a must read.

The book gives indeed a very good introduction of what is essential when you consider introducing ESs. It really gets the message across that the real benefit of these systems is when your decision is business driven and you adjust your business processes with it. That helped me to deepen my understanding of these systems and my knowledge I got from reading quite a number of articles on the subject. But when I was about half the book it was getting tougher to continue. I really got the feeling that the incremental knowledge I was learning from continued reading was drastically going down. It is a problem I have with many of these university background writers. They feel a need to create a kind of science flavor to their subject, and start using far too many words to explain their subject. It probably was more helpful to provide more real life examples of successful and unsuccessful cases (at least that is my personal preference) The future developments chapter at the end of the book was a disaster for me. It is too technical (or scientific) and too little practical. I still have no clue of what Daverport's message is for us on this subject. Still, I would recommend the book to anyone who is considering buying an ES and has insufficient knowledge of ES, or for those who have an ES but don't feel they are really getting what they hoped for. Because, like Davenport writes in his intro somewhere, I don't know any other book who can give you the same insight as Davenport has done.

With an easy-to-read writing style, Davenport clearly explains how to go about getting the kind of results from ESs which business executives expect. While many people involved in implementations might get lost in the details and lose sight of the overall objective, Davenport offers extremely useful check-lists and guidelines to make sure your bosses will be happy. Finally, the multitude of real-life examples reassures the reader that the book is not just a set of theoretical hypotheses. I couldn't imagine planning a future ES or working on an existing one without knowledge of this book.

This book has never received the recognition that it deserves.

It is about ERP systems ... or Enterprise Systems (ES) as Davenport calls them.

If you're interested in the STRATEGIC issues of ERP systems, then you'll learn that there are surprisingly few books on this topic on the market.

Davenport's contributions are the best that I've found. Especially, I found his discussion of implementation approaches on speed and focus (quick relief vs. long-term competitiveness) interesting. Also his perspectives on "after the implementation" were far ahead of his time. In addition, his considerations on the implementation plan's options on scope and function (process phasing vs. big bang vs. geographical or business unit phasing) are illustrative.

Perhaps Davenport's book could be better structured, but considering the quality of the arguments in the text, I can live with it. Content before structure. Five stars!

Peter Drucker wrote in 1999 "we have spend the last 50 years on the T in IT, we need to spend the next 50 years on the I in IT". If you read Davenport's book, you'll be better prepared to capture the information part than the technology part in ERP systems.

If you're interested in the more tactical and operational issues of ERP systems, then buy Brady's "Concepts in Enterprise Resource Planning" (2001) and Hamilton's "Maximizing your ERP System - A practical guide for managers [in manufacturing firms]" (2002). I also recommend Kalakota's "E-Services" (2003) that takes the full concept of the next step for an extended ERP system (including Multi-Channel Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management, Product Lifecycle Management, Employee and Business Partner Collaboration, etc). Finally I have to mention "Why ERP? A Primer on SAP Implementation" by Jacobs and Whybark. It's a wonderful little book - actually a business novel - on ERP systems. I read it twice ... before entering a job as e-business manager with SAP R/3 as back-end system. Great help.

Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

....on implementing ES/ERP systems for your business' continued success in a world of rapidly changing technologies. Although not a technical book, Mission Critical is an invaluable guide that can help ERP managers, as well as IT specialists and top-level management differentiate between implementing leading edge and "bleeding-edge" technologies for their organizations. Focusing on business, not technology, the strategic guidelines provided by Davenport can help any company - whether large or small - translate their business needs into technological solutions.

A very good read for managers and implementors who are ready to embark on an ERP installation. Chapters are logically organised, although I am holding back the last star because of the way Davenport has organised the content within chapters. You won't really notice it if you are reading the book back-to-back, but it's quite obvious when you try making notes from chapters. Sometimes, bits of information are scattered across sections in chapters.

There are important topics on creating benefits in the installation, and how to avoid failures. In particular, I felt the sections on how an ERP installation affects competitive strategy, organisational structure and culture very impressive; it's hard to find such stuff so well-written in many books.

The sections on pre-, during, and post-implementation issues are interesting read and I feel complemented Daniel O'Leary's "Enterprise Resource Planning Systems: Systems, Life Cycles, Electronic Commerce and Risk" 2000, Cambridge University Press very well. The interested reader should read both sections from both books. :)

Davenport hits another one on the nose. This is a great top-level look at achieving business goals using enterprise system software. If you've got one or are implementing one, you should read this book.