After 1990s, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) gradually becomes the enterprises’ basic information platform. ERP is often employed by companies to integrate SCM and CRM, leading to an integrated supply chain with capability to link supplies and customers. The deployment of information resources is predicated on information technology infrastructure(ITI), which provides various sorts of information services. The implementation success of information system requires ITI to work smoothly with business processes. It is apparent that ITI, although an issue related to the IT domain, is capable of influencing the whole organization. This leads to an important role for ITI in implementing ERP by enterprise.
The purpose of a company’s strategic planning is to adopt itself to the environment change. This would demand a sounding planning of limited resources with ITI being included. The objective of IT strategy(ITS) is to provide the enterprise an overall action plan for employing information resources.From the literature survey, an interactive relationship between ITI, ITS, and ERP implementation was proposed by this research.
This research employed case study methodology to investigate four companies which had implemented ERP.The focus is to explore the relationship among ITI, ITS, and ERP implementation. The research results indicated that, if ITS is well planned prior to the implementation, the implementation process would be less problematic and the results would be beneficial to the company’s competitive advantage. As for the relationship between ITS and ITI, if the deployment of IT is directed to improve business value and competiveness, the required investment on ITI would be more. In turn, a competent ITI which provides support which are less prepared in ITI, implementing ERP has the effect of reininforcing the company’s ITI.In addition, for the value judgement of ITI and the motivation of ERP implementation, this research developed an investment intensity matrix which can provide reference for investment decision on ITI.
In the final analysis, the research provided a list of the IT infrastructure service needed by ERP implementation, acting as a guideline for information resource deploymeny for the enterprises that intent to implement ERP system.