Author(s)

Mohamed Fasileem¹, Bandara Rajapakse^2*

¹Faculty of Management and Finance, University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
²Department of Accounting, Faculty of Management and Finance, University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Utilizing the right resources and adequate capabilities helps to bring competitive advantages and it assists to generate valuable positions for the business. Most importantly, utilizing the unique resources within the organization enhances the senior management’s decision-making capabilities. From Sri Lanka, one of the leading apparel manufacturing organizations was selected for this research study and a case-based qualitative method was adopted for it. XYZ Cloud ERP system was selected to implement at ABC (Pvt.) Ltd. by expecting to bring competitive advantages and a valuable position to the business. However, the preliminary study revealed that the organization has failed to bring expected outcomes and it is required to identify the causes and explore the reasons for the underutilization of the XYZ Cloud ERP system. This study has adopted thematic network analysis to identify the causes and explore reasons from the senior management who are responsible for taking strategic decisions. To understand the central phenomena of the above problem setting, semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data. Nine (9) senior executives and one (1) director were selected representing different levels of industry experience, academic backgrounds, and decision-making authority. The study was aimed from the organizational, cultural, information system quality, information quality and service quality perspectives. Altogether thirteen (13) factors were identified and seven (7) of them were recognized as the most influencing causes and reasons for the underutilization of the XYZ Cloud ERP system. Findings explain that the XYZ Cloud ERP system has failed to provide different levels of analytical information and senior management has failed to understand the significance of the information system’s data. Moreover, the merging of the ERP system’s data with the excel spreadsheet’s data helps to produce decision-making information and it negatively influences the use of the XYZ Cloud ERP system. The findings further reveal that the lack of support from the ERP vendor and top management promotes traditional practices and discourages to use of the XYZ Cloud ERP system maximum. Finally, recommendations are proposed to overcome the negatively influencing causes and reasons. Most significantly, it helps to bring people development, organizational transformation and organisational business processes improvements.

Sri Lanka, Cloud ERP, Strategic Decision-Making and Apparel Industry

Fasileem, M. and Rajapakse, B. (2022) Exploring Causes for Underutilization of the XYZ Cloud ERP System for Effective Strategic Decision-Making: A Case from ABC (Pvt.) Ltd.—Sri Lanka. Open Journal of Business and Management, 10, 1811-1833. doi: 10.4236/ojbm.2022.104093.