Maintenance and Support Model within the ERP Systems Lifecycle: Action Research in an Implementer Company

Organizations continue to adopt ERP systems. It seems to be a way to increase efficiency and gain advantages over competitors. Traditionally, decision, selection, planning, and implementation phases were the focus of ERP systems lifecycle. However, main problems of several implementation failures were related to lack of customer support and adequate maintenance. This paper presents a proposal of a maintenance and support (M&S) model within ERP systems lifecycle which includes 4 support activities and 41 maintenance activities separated by 4 phases, respectively, problem and modification analysis, implementation of modification, revision and acceptance phase and migration. Differently from others, at this model, the support is autonomous from maintenance, evidencing its role between operation and maintenance. It is also presented an action research performed in an ERP implementer company where an evaluation of maturity level of all 45 M&S activities were made. The analysis of existing M&S practices in this company allowed to understand this implementer has significant weaknesses with 20% of its processes (9) not or poorly implemented, and therefore, presenting great opportunities for improvement. Some of these practices were discussed.