  So far little effort has been put into researching the importance of internal
ERP project stakeholders mutual interactions,realizing the projects
complexity,influence on the whole organization, and high risk for a useful
final outcome. This research analyzes the stakeholders interactions and
positions in the project network, their criticality, potential bottlenecks and
conflicts. The main methods used are Social Network Analysis, and the
elicitation of drivers for the individual players. Information was collected
from several stakeholders from three large ERP projects all in global companies
headquartered in Finland, together with representatives from two different ERP
vendors, and with two experienced ERP consultants. The analysis gives
quantitative as well as qualitative characterization of stakeholder criticality
(mostly the Project Manager(s), the Business Owner(s) and the Process
Owner(s)), degree of centrality, closeness, mediating or bottleneck roles,
relational ties and conflicts (individual, besides those between business and
project organizations), and clique formations. A generic internal stakeholder
network model is established as well as the criticality of the project phases.
The results are summarized in the form of a list of recommendations for future
ERP projects to address the internal stakeholder impacts .Project management
should utilize the latest technology to provide tools to increase the
interaction between the stakeholders and to monitor the strength of these
relations. Social network analysis tools could be used in the projects to
visualize the stakeholder relations in order to better understand the possible
risks related to the relations (or lack of them).
