how sap conquered the world

8/14/2019 How SAP Conquered the World

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Draft of Introduction from: Neil Pollock and Robin Williams (2009) Software and

Organizations: The Biography of the Enterprise Solution Or How SAP Conquered the

World, London, Routledge.


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Introduction: The Reshaping of the Modern Enterprise

Solution

November 1990: The Hague. The UK Science and Engineering Research

Council (SERC) sent one of its leading experts to an international workshop

organised to discuss the future of the computer systems used to run industrial

enterprises. The workshop was one of a number organised in Europe and the

USA that year to assess the prospects for these technologies that were seen as

constituting best practice in manufacturing organisations and crucial for

industrial competitiveness.

The workshop, organised by The Eindhoven Group, widely regarded as the

leading research group in Europe on these technologies, attracted a strong

and interdisciplinary turnout, with over sixty consultants, technology vendors,

users and academics, coming together to discuss its provocative rationale

document. Gerry Waterlow (consultant to SERCs Application of Computers

and Manufacturing and Engineering Directorate) circulated a report, drawing

attention to the consensus that appeared to have been reached around the

central argument advanced by this document. He suggested that these

conclusions could probably be regarded as a reasonable snapshot of the

direction in which the particular technology they were all there to discuss was

moving. It was even suggested that such was the consensus - the workshop

itself might help to underwrite this future direction since many of the actors

central to its shaping were present in the room.

The technology under the microscope was the state of the art of what we today

would call Enterprise Resource Planning solutions known then as

Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) systems. In the late 1980s, MRP

technology had been heavily promoted as a solution suitable for a wide range

of organisations. However the title of the workshop - Beyond MRP: MRP and

the Future of Standard Software for Production Planning and Control

made it clear something was afoot. One did not have to read too far into the

workshop rationale document to see the sting:


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The development of MRP (I and II) has led [] to a specific

production control philosophy [as well] as to standard software for

production control. Control philosophy and standard software are

heavily intertwined. Having standard software for production control

is very important in practice, as well with respect to the whole

implementation and training process as with respect to maintenance.

On the other hand MRP (philosophy and software) seems not to fit well

everywhere (Workshop Rationale Document, no page no.).

The workshop had been motivated by growing concerns that this latest breed

of enterprise system was proving problematic. Users, it seems, found these

systems difficult to apply and as a result, they were not widely adopted.

Some of the difficulties experienced concerned their generic nature and it

was generally perceived that the processes embedded in the software were

too rigid for most adopting organisations. Indeed, The Eindhoven Group

saw the workshop as a means to debate the reasons as to why this was, as

well as to identify ways forwards. They concluded that it was time to

discuss the future of standard software in general and more specifically the

future of MRP. The workshop put forward three scenarios for MRP

development:

i) gradual evolution of generalised MRP with the existing softwaresuppliers remaining the major vendors;

ii) increase in user-driven special versions of MRP for particularindustries, leading to partnerships between users and smaller suppliers

concentrating on vertical markets;

iii) decline in significance of MRP [to be replaced by] Factorymanagement systems, supplied by system integrators with a broad

range of skills (systems, software, communications, automation)

[which] will take over MRP2 functions (Waterlow 1990: 2).


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The conference background paper (Wijngaard 1990: 5) described the latter as

the 'more radical scenario, and one for which there is substantial evidence

that new ideas are emerging from outside the MRP world. Concepts such as

Just-In-Time and Computer-Integrated-Manufacture would, it argued, be

captured better by Factory Management Systems rather than MRP.

Moreover:

[t]he special needs of industry sectors cannot be met by a generic MRP

system, and different methods will emerge. These developments are

being made today partly by a new group of systems integrators who

have stronger technical skills in systems, communication, automation,

and new software technologies. In this scenario the structure of the

software industry is likely to change as new suppliers appear (ibid.: 5).

During the workshop, there was the general feeling that the current direction

of the enterprise system was not sustainable. The majority [present at the

conference] considered MRP2 in the form of standard software as an

unworkable concept (ibid.: 4). The future as they saw it was not with generic

software packages but instead there was an urgent need for alternative more

context specific software packages (ibid.: 6). Intriguingly, the workshop

deliberations showed little awareness that waiting just around the corner was

a new breed of software supplier that would herald in a very different future

for the enterprise system

The modern enterprise-wide information system has become a generic software

package. A small number of software suppliers, it seems, of which the German-based

software company SAP is the clear leader, have succeeded in deploying their

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems within and across many different

organisations, sectors and countries around the globe. Large corporations and

organisations throughout the world now appear to be dominated by a new breed of

standardised packaged solution. How has this happened? Indeed the fact it has

happened at all is remarkable when one considers only two decades ago leading

experts and practitioners agreed that the future for organisational information systems

was notwith generic IT solutions. Back then, and based on experience with the state-


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of-the-art integrated enterprise planning solutions of the day, many experts considered

it highly unlikely that a small number of generic information systems could meet the

needs of organisations within and across sectors (Waterlow 1990). These systems

were seen as too standardised for the complex and diverse needs of adopting

organisations (which, as they saw it, required alternative and more flexible, locally

specific kinds of solutions). Thus, the future for technology supply was seen to lie

with vendors developing varieties of sector specific offerings that could be locally

adapted to the various particular user organisations seeking to apply them.

Discussions of sectoral difference and organisational uniqueness were the order of the

day and semi-generic and highly tailorable packages were seen to be the way

forward.

However, whilst the structure of the software industry has changed this is not in the

way predicted by The Eindhoven Group. Despite their assessment at the 1990s

workshop, a new breed of software package supplier has emerged which has managed

to reuse and recycle highly standardised systems into thousands of different

organisations. These packaged solutions now make up a substantial part, perhaps the

majority of organisational IT expenditure (Jakovljevic 2001) and include, as well as

ERP, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management

(SCM) and other financial and administrative systems. The extension of the generic

package into organisations worldwide is all the more remarkable when one considers

that not only was the phenomenal success of suppliers like SAP not on the radar

during the workshop but the vision for the direction of these systems was far removed

from what we have today. However, before the end of that decade, SAPs now

famous R3 package, followed by other suppliers of similar generic software

solutions that have became known as Enterprise Resource Planning systems, would

have swept through major corporations in Europe, the USA and beyond, moving out

from manufacturing into services and the public sector. This poses the following

questions: How has this happened? How has this new breed of supplier been able to

extend their systems into organisations worldwide? Moreover, what does this mean

for the character of the organisational information system and wider arena in which

they are situated?


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What is clear from the rise of these kinds of solutions is that the nature of the modern

enterprise system is changing. Not only have these new suppliers recycled their

technologies into many different places but, arguably, in doing so, they have heralded

a shift in the conception of the organisational information system. What is at stake is a

profound change in ideas about the very notion of the modern corporate solution: this

encompasses how they should be developed and implemented as well as the extent to

which they should address particular sectoral and organisational requirements.

Clearly, these new kinds of systems have important implications for researchers

interested in the technology and organisation relationship. How are we to respond to

the rise of this new breed of software supplier and the extension of the generic

enterprise system in a sensible and comprehensive way (i.e. without either inflating or

reducing these changes)?

However, despite the fact these kinds of standardised packaged solutions account for

the bulk of systems used today, we cannot in a conceptually and empirically robust

manner explain their rise to prominence. We do not know precisely how the modern

corporate system became a generic package. Though practitioners may advance well-

rehearsed potted-histories of this artefact there are very few studies of the

origination and design of these artefacts, let alone research which addresses the

evolution of this technology along its protracted lifecycle. These kinds of IT systems

have had nowhere near the kind of sociological attention they deserve. Why is this?

One reason is that the received wisdom amongst many scholars interested in the social

study of technology would be that generic solutions only have limited applicability:

for some, there is no such thing as a universal or one size fits all solution (Star &

Ruhleder 1996; Hanseth & Braa 2001). Standard systems only work to the extent they

are adapted by user organisations through messy localisation processes. Thus,

according to many sociologists it is users and adopting organisations that should

be studied. Whilst, on the one hand, we share their interests in implementation it has

also meant that, on the other, recent research on information systems has become

somewhat unbalanced. In focusing principally upon user organisations, social

scientists have not adequately conceptualised and analysed standardised information

solutions. There is not, for instance, a comprehensive understanding of the inner

workings of the leading software supplier organisations. Nor do we have a


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sophisticated appreciation of the wider information system industry dynamics that

surrounds software producers. This is reflected by the lack of frameworks that explain

the extension of these systems across sectors and this wider shift from specialised to

generic software. Let us briefly look at some of the dominant ways these technologies

are researched.

The current social science research on packaged enterprise systems is broadly

gathered around two opposing poles. The first, typified by more managerially focused

kinds of analysis, views ERP systems and the like as more or less transformatory

technologies containing universal logics. They imply that because of the nature of

their design these systems can be applied extensively across all kinds of corporations

and bring about widespread change (see for instance OLeary [2000] and Bendoly and

Jacobs [2005]). Not surprisingly, this view has been seen as problematic by critical

social scientists. Thus, a second pole has subjected these discourses of transformation

and universalism to critical assessment. In what might broadly be characterised as the

Social Study of Information Systems (McLaughlin et al 1999; Ciborra 2000;

Walsham 2001; Sawyer 2000; Avgerou 2002) scholars have advanced alternative

accounts of the spread of these solutions. Many have produced what might be

described as situated and localist explanations, often drawing on the

groundbreaking work of Suchman (1987) as well as ethnographic study (see for

instance Knox et al. [2005]). These accounts typically contrast the uniqueness in

structure and practices of user organisations with the standardisation of packaged

solutions, and have tended to emphasise the contingency surrounding the

implementation of these systems (Hanseth et al. 2001).

However, whilst this literature is highly informative, it also tells us rather little about

what we regard as one of the most important developments in the short history of

corporate information systems: the shift from locally specific to generic systems.

Scholars in the Social Study of Information Systems, for instance, have thus focussed

selectively upon certain aspects and moments of the software package life cycle and

as a result, they offer what have now become well-rehearsed but also highly partial

accounts. Critical social science should be able to give a more comprehensive analysis

of the reshaping of the modern corporate system. Not to do so has risks - handing the


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terrain to other disciplines.1

This has meant that the debate around enterprise systems

has been unevenly developed and unhelpfully fragmented between rather narrow (e.g.

managerial or technical) perspectives. Of course, every failing is also an opportunity,

and the gap that exists in our current understanding is also one we hope to fill (at least

in part) with this book.

RHETORICS OF TECHNOLOGY SUPPLY

Today, few can deny that packaged highly standardised forms of enterprise solutions

have become an important feature of our organisational landscape. In this respect,

Management scholars have been prolific in celebrating their various features and

characteristics. Daniel OLeary (2000), for instance, goes as far as describing systems

like ERP as nothing less than a corporate marvel. They have undoubtedly had an

enormous influence on the business and information system worlds, he argues,

affecting each of the following dimensions. They have experienced a huge market

growth, being taken-up by most of the major corporations around the world. They are

also now increasingly being rolled out within small and medium-sized enterprises.

Moreover, within corporations they have been used as one of the primary tools for re-

engineering the organisation as well as the diffusion of many best practices.

Added to this, there is also the (mostly implicit) assumption that they have heralded in

a new class of computer solution (Klaus et al. 2000). This, firstly, is the suggestion

that the generic-ness of these solutions is an achievable design issue (Carey 1998).

In addition, that these solutions can be recycled across similar classes of

organisations (Deifel 1999). This can be within the same or related industrial sector or

as is now increasingly common across different and unrelated sectors and

organisational forms. Secondly, and in stark contrast to the organisational information

systems that went before, these systems are now generally thought to behave like

products that can be selected and purchased as with other kinds of commodities

(Deifel 1999; Heiskanen et al. 2000; Regnell et al. 2001; Xu and Brinkkemper 2005).

There are of course aspects of this brief account that deserve to be challenged. One of

which is that enterprise systems were not simply borne software packages or

generic solutions. Rather, something had to be done to them to achieve their

generic-ness and commodity status. It is notable that Management research


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provides very little, whether in terms of empirical findings or conceptual frameworks,

that will afford an adequate understanding of this something. This is true amongst

even the more highly regarded of works such as Davenport (2000b). In terms of the

first point (generic-ness) this literature tells us almost nothing about how the

suppliers design and develop these systems and products or on what they base the

design of generic solutions? We understand very little about how different suppliers

manage the tension between designing systems for a specific user and for a wider

market. This is important whether a package is being redesigned from a generic to a

niche specific solution or whether it is being recycled from one sector to another or

upgraded from custom built software to a generic system. In terms of the second

point (commodity status) we have little understanding of just how software

packages are typically presented to potential adopters. This includes the different

strategies and decision-making processes of those adopting software packages (the

process by which users assess and make sense of the wide range of alternatives and

options available). This is whether to procure one of the more generic of systems on

offer or a more flexible ERP alternative. On one hand, it is acknowledged that

organisations find it difficult to critically assess and evaluate the range of packages on

offer. Moreover, there is a growing awareness of the costs of ending up with the

wrong solution and this is provoking uncertainty among user organisations. Yet, on

the other, this appears to have done little to deter the uptake of packages. Other

considerations and actors are obviously at work here.

One of the other problems of the Management literature (including Davenport) is that

it tends to be based on a particularly weak empirical base. Rather than study actual

technologies, these writers tend simply to align themselves with the statements and

rhetorics of technology supply. We therefore turn to other disciplines within the social

sciences, where these criticisms apply less, and where there are numerous frameworks

available to trace this development (although none appear fined tuned enough to

analyse the biography of the generic solution in the way we think necessary). And

which over recent years they have amassed an enormous amount of qualitative and

particularly ethnographic research data.


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REACTION AGAINST PACKAGED SOLUTIONS

The Social Study of Information Systems is made up of work from scholars within

Science & Technology Studies (STS), Information Systems (IS) research and

Organisation Studies.2

In the face of often quite deterministic and supplier dominated

debates, researchers from these approaches were among the first to characterise the

complexities and difficulties associated with modern packaged information systems

(see Lucas et al. 1988; Webster and Williams 1993; Salzman and Rosenthal 1994).

Much of this critical project has grown up in opposition to the more dominant

supply side accounts. Thus, it is no surprise this work predominately focuses on the

struggles adopting organisations engage in whilst attempting to make generic and

standard systems work within their user settings. There have been many studies now

showing how packaged systems seldom translate (or translate easily) across

boundaries, whether these are between organisations within the same sector, between

industrial sectors, or between public and private sector ones (Pollock & Cornford

2004). The difficulties in developing solutions that can be widely applied result, it is

commonly argued, from the diversity of organisational settings and the resultant gulf

that exists between the system and the specific contexts, practices and requirements of

particular user organisations. Indeed if generic packages do work across settings, this

would, under these perspectives, be seen to be only at great expense to the adopting

organisation (in terms of adapting the package and prejudicing the benefits of

standard solutions or imposing unwanted organisational change in order to meet

presumptions built into the package). Indeed there is now a large (and rather

interesting) literature on cases of failure, implementation difficulties, and on the costs

and risks associated with adopting these systems (Scott and Vessey 2002; Newman

and Westrup 2005; Wagner and Newell 2006).

Yet, if we are to view this literature a little more critically, when reading some of

these studies it is a wonder these systems extend at all. The latter sets of arguments

are pursued with such vigour there is such a desire it seems to demonstrate the

complex organisational and technical reworkings necessary to sustain packaged

software that there appears to be an entrenched scepticism with regard to their wider

applicability (Soh et al. 2000; Scott and Wagner 2003; Soh and Sia 2004). For many

social scientists, especially those informed by sociology and anthropology, the large

software suppliers like SAP should notbe successful. Sociological/anthropological


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theory tells them that organisations are too diverse to deploy these highly generic

kinds of systems. Many studies therefore end up suggesting - based on difficulties and

complications witnessed during fieldwork - that ERP systems and the like have no

more than limited potential for extension. How couldthe same or similar (or even

slightly adapted) organisational IT system be applied across many different types of

organisations with all the diversity and heterogeneity found there (Soh et al. 2000;

Soh and Sia 2004)? In addition, to support these assumptions, we are introduced to

various explanations (and a growing vocabulary) as to why these systems should not

work across settings.3

Related to this, many accounts of package implementation

describe how these solutions if not completely failing appear constantly on the brink

of failure (in this respect see Constants [1999] critique of tendency within STS to

over emphasise technological breakdowns). In short, it appears that within the Social

Study of Information Systems there are (implicitly) a powerful set of objections

advanced towards generic enterprise solutions. Sociologists interested in the

technology and organisation relationship have looked in one direction only, through

what we would argue is an inappropriate theoretical lens, studying reworkings rather

than extensions, with the upshot that many of their assessments now sound rather

reminiscent of The Eindhoven Group.

Although this work was a useful corrective to the more dominant supply side view,

today, it now appears incomplete. It is advancing a fairly reductive analytical schema

(and one it must be said that tends to produce rather familiar sounding stories). If we

are to answer the questions set out above, which as scholars interested in the social

analysis of technology we must, then the current approach by itself is no longer

sufficient. We ourselves have been guilty, if this is the right word, of advancing

such arguments. Williams, for instance, strongly concurred with the consensus back in

the 1990s that the future was not with generic packages. Likewise Pollock

problematised the transfer of ERP within the public sector suggesting, based on

observations during ethnographic fieldwork, that these systems would be ineffective

for these very different kinds of organisations. We both presented what were accurate

snapshots at that point in time but also ones that some years later, and with the

luxury of resources/time to revisit fieldwork settings, we realise were very much only

a partial picture.


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One of the reasons why the social analysis of technology generally and the Social

Study of Information Systems specifically has not adequately conceptualised and

studied these technologies is intellectually deep rooted. Scholars interested in the

technology and organisation relationship have been highly influenced by

constructivist, interactionist and, especially more recently, Actor Network Theory

(ANT) accounts. However, we would argue these are not adequate to study packaged

systems - especially in light of their increased commodification, globalisation and

generification. Our main point of contention is the emphasis these approaches bring

towards local ethnographic studies and micro-sociological concepts (but see Knorr-

Cetina and Bruegger [2002] who develop micro-sociological concepts for studying

global phenomena). Whilst highly effective in producing rich local pictures, that is to

say capturing the various struggles and choices around the design or (more frequently)

the implementation of new technologies, they also tend to provide a rather

reductionist form of analysis.

Certain kinds of study and situation have become the norm in our discipline (and

given undue emphasis). This is the ERP implementation study and within this

attention is given to immediate action and heroic local actors, for instance, who

appear able to create and recreate their organisational world almost from scratch (a

form of work that often includes the large-scale reworking of the newly implemented

information system see for instance Scott and Wagner [2003]). However we are not

wholly convinced that most useful way to study these artefacts is solely at the place

where the user encounters them (Kallinikos 2004a,b). This view is inherently

problematic when one considers that with software packages we are dealing with a

technology that was developed at some distance from it place of use. In this respect,

the emphasis on local studies of adoption offers an inadequate lens for exploring the

development and influence of complex organisational technologies like ERP (that

exhibit very different dynamics to traditional software systems or, for that matter,

other kinds of organisational technologies). We do not think it sufficient to analyse

the extension of the software package by reducing explanations to simply local action

and contingency or in terms of the victory of the local over the global or vice versa.

Existing studies both downplay the influence of technology supply and often overlook

the influence of the broader historical setting on the unfolding of the technology.


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Thus, we argue that we need different approaches to explain the rise of the modern

enterprise system.

Indeed the lack of research around the topic is one of the reasons we have chosen to

subtitle this book in this provocative manner (How SAP conquered the world). Let

us briefly explain. Firstly, this is not a book specifically about the large global

supplier SAP (it is not the history of SAP though such a study is long overdue) but a

more general account of the new breed of software produced that has recently

emerged. SAP, and a number of its competitors, notably Oracle, have been the

principle actors heralding in the new kind class of software package known as the

ERP system.4

Secondly, there are many who might take issue with the word

conquer, which suggests the winning of a battle or victory of some sort. This is not

what we intend here. We do not believe this new breed of software supplier has

simply waged a war and emerged successfully. This is far from the case. Rather we

use the term primarily as offering a counter to current biases within the Social Study

of Information Systems towards localisation arguments, to encourage social scientists

to offer alternative explanations for the rise of this new class of technology. It is in

this sense we hope the title and the book more generally is read.

AIM OF THE BOOK

To this effect, we see the book as a means to redress the imbalance that has developed

in the social analysis of technology through encouraging a shift beyondthe

implementation study to study the career of artefacts in their historical context and

along the full length of their life cycle. This includes studying enterprise-wide

software applications across their software and product life cycle. It is only

through tracing what might be called the biography of the modern enterprise system

and observing this biography from multiple viewpoints and timescales that we can

begin to understand how this kind of software package has emerged. It is interesting

to note that, despite the fact that the packaged enterprise system has been around for a

few decades now, that there are still far too few specific sociological concepts to

capture the various interdisciplinary issues surrounding generic and commodified

solutions, even though some scholars have acknowledged the stark difference

between this and bespoke software (Sawyer 2000, 2001). There is no sociology of the

packaged software solution. Much discussion seem content to borrow or recycle terms


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from other fields: from the discipline of Information Systems itself whose terms and

concepts have emerged from the study of different kinds of technology (for instance

bespoke software development); or from anthropology and cultural sociology both of

which exhibit particular disciplinary biases constricting our view of these systems. If

we are to be serious about studying the specific dynamics and lifecycle of generic

packages as both software andproduct then we arguably require a more specific

framework to do this. This should build on as well as provide a critique of existing

social science accounts of technology. It is this that we modestly attempt here -

through offering an approach that can loosely be described as the Biography of

Artefacts Framework.

The Biography of Artefacts Framework

It has become axiomatic in Science and Technology Studies (STS), the sub-discipline

in which we are located, that we need to analyse technologies not just as material

objects but also as heterogeneous assemblages, which means taking into account the

visions and beliefs, the techniques and practices, as well as the various actors

involved in the development, implementation, use and governance of an innovation.

The creation and implementation of new technologies thus involves a complex

interplay between diverse social and technical factors. As there is no clear

boundary between what is social and what is technical, we should refer to these more

precisely as socio-technical factors (though the latter term is something of a mouthful

and for ease of expression we have not always used it (Hughes [1983])).

One of the ongoing debates within STS is that there has been insufficient attention to

theorising how these socio-technical assemblages and their development are shaped

by their historical context. There are important exceptions of course. Bijker (1995),

for example, drew attention to the configuration of the Technological Frame(s) that

surrounds the development and use of an artefact. More particularly, scholars from the

Social Shaping of Technology (SST) perspective (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1985)

have sought to characterise how the pathways of technological innovation are

patterned by their history and context. That is, how innovation is shaped by an array

of existing social relationships: the knowledges and commitments of various actors

involved; the complementary technologies available, and in particular by the ways

these elements are all configured together (Srensen and Williams 2002). One of the


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new concepts that have arisen within SST to capture the dynamics of innovation

processes is that of the biography of artefacts.

Brady, Tierney and Williams (1992) suggested that packaged software artefacts had

biographies highlighting how custom applications became the basis of commodified

niche-specific solutions. Williams (1997) further applied this concept to analysing the

evolution of Computer-Aided Production Management (CAPM) systems. The notion

was used to describe how new industrial IT applications often emerged through the

enhancement of existing applications. When supplier offerings were implemented,

they inevitably had to be adapted to fit the technical and operational circumstances of

adopting organisations. This process often threw up further useful innovations that

could feed into future technology supply. Industrial automation artefacts thus evolved

through successive cycles of technical development and industrial implementation

and use, a spiral of innovation if you like, oscillating between moments of

development, implementation and use. These short-term cycles were phases in a

longer-term biography; and longitudinal studies showed how the CAPM and MRP II

systems of the 1980s and 1990s, widely seen as the precursors for todays ERP

systems, themselves emerged from stock and production control systems developed in

the 1960s in Vehicle and Aerospace sectors. Later Pollock (Pollocket al. 2003;

Pollock & Cornford 2004) expanded the concept of biography to study how ERP

systems were able to move within and across industrial sectors (most notably from the

private to the public). And in so doing they highlighted how these systems often

carried with them large amounts of accumulated functionality and how this history

had important implications of the reshaping of adopting organisations (public

organisations and specifically universities). Overall then our early usage of the

concept of biography drew our attention to the way in which the development and

evolution of artefacts was shaped by its social (or more precisely socio-technical)

context.

What we want to do now with our emerging biographies framework is to redirect the

analytical lens, if you like; to broaden the scope of enquiry away from the (mainly

implementation) stages about which we already have a reasonable body of knowledge

and towards those locales and moments of innovation where much less is known (of

which there are many of interest and relevance). We also suggest that to have a


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complete understanding of the biography of the packaged enterprise solution we must

not simply study single systems but trace and compare the career of a number of

solutions. On top of this, we must also broader our field of view. We must shift our

lens outwards at times to investigate the wider context in which these systems are

located, to capture the other actors who play a role in constituting these systems and

the market in which they are located. Some of the suggestions we will put forward in

the book include the arguments of a move away from flat ethnographies or simple

methodological nostrums such as following the actor (Latour 1987) to more

theoretically informed, longitudinal selections of different sites and moments for

study. We will argue that there is the need for a different type of qualitative study, a

more strategic ethnography, which addresses the technology/society relationship at

multiple levels and timeframes. In lieu of what we might call atomistic studies we

want to focus on the need for biographies that track the trajectory of a group of

artefacts and their associated practices over time; and for better spatial metaphors

addressing how these generic and global technologies are instantiated at multiple sites

and across distributed contexts (see Burawoy et al. [2000] who have discussed this

latter point albeit not in the context of software packages). Rather than study ERP, for

instance, in particular socially/temporally bounded locales we argue for a variable

research geometry that can be applied to diverse issues and in differing contexts,

depending on the issue(s) being addressed and entities being tracked. More

concretely, we develop the concept of biographies as a means of analysing the

emergence and evolution of software packages. And here we found useful to follow

Hyysalos (2004) multi-level framework and distinguish at a least three different

levels:

(i) the development of particular enterprise systems (as well as theorganizations and people connected to them);

(ii) the development of an overall class of artefact; and

(iii) the coupling of a technological field and a societal practice.


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To this aim we seek to provide tools for analysing the influence of the social setting at

different levels of generality (from the immediate micro-context of involved actors, to

the broader institutional macro-setting) as well as the multiple historical timescales

(short, medium and long-term) at which analysis may be undertaken. We identify the

social spaces in which innovation occurs, including the specific arenas in which

technologies are developed and implemented, and broader linkages across this

heterogeneous community. Here, we highlight the emergence of new kinds of

intermediaries, such as industry analysts, who help shape expectations about the

development of technological fields and constitute markets for constantly changing

supplier offerings.

RESEARCH SCOPE

This book is based on a long-term research project where we have been able to

assemble what we would argue is a comprehensive and in-depth picture of the

evolution of particular enterprise-wide solutions for the greater part of their lifecycle,

from their early stages of conception to today, including projections of future

developments. We have had unique access to several software providers, including a

global software giant whom we describe throughout using the pseudonym SoftCo,

and a number of user organisations and user fora. Importantly we have been able to

view the work of SoftCo from a number of distinctive viewpoints. Firstly, this was

from inside where we observed how they managed their packages as well as the

users attached to them at one particular point in their lifecycle (the technical support

process for their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system). Secondly,

again from the inside, we witnessed how SoftCo interfaced with various sets of users

during the development of one of their products (this was the design and requirements

gathering stages of a new ERP module that we describe throughout as Campus).

Thirdly, we continued to study this particular ERP module along a number of

different phases in its life cycle, from inception through to maturity. Fourthly, we

also studied the module at the supplier-user nexus through long-term participation in a

particular SoftCo User Group where we observed the user community attached to the

module and wider ERP system. We can thus claim to have a comprehensive

knowledge of this particular ERP module (having followed its career for nearly a

decade now).


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As well as discussions of ERP, we also analysed other solutions - although our

knowledge of them is based on much shorter studies. We researched the design of a

small software package, which is being used for accommodation management,

relatively early in its development. We studied this system particularly from the point

of view of its history and future projections (i.e. regarding which markets the supplier

hoped to take it into) and this was useful as it allowed use compare the strategies of

various vendors and at different stages of maturity. We also conducted a study of a

CRM system procurement within a large public organisation. This gave us the

opportunity to observe how suppliers present their solutions to potential users and

how adopters make technical assessments of the various vendor offerings and

promises. Finally we conducted a study of a group of industry analysts called The

Gartner Group which, whilst not directly involved in the production or use of

software, play an important role in constituting various aspects of the wider packaged

enterprise system arena.

In terms of our emerging framework, the approach we have adopted is a comparative

one that analyses the biography of a number of packages as they move across similar

organisations, from one national context to another, and from the private to public

sector. The selected packages were at different stages in their biography and were

characterised by different levels of product maturity and standardisation. This rich

combination of data collection methods enabled detailed current and longitudinal

analysis and comparisons between cases in different sectors and stages in the package

maturation. Whilst we discuss our framework in more detail in Chapter Three, we

briefly mention our overarching methodology and research design. Most of the

insights presented here were gathered during ethnographic research and observation.

At times, however, we also supplemented this research with interviews. We chose our

sites based on a combination of opportunism and through theoretically informed

choices about which sites and nexuses might be interesting and, according to our view

of the state of the field, in need of further study. In other words, we studied those

places where we could negotiate access (and a difficulty with access is one reason for

the relative paucity of studies of packaged software design) but also sought out

particular sites. These choices, of course, were constantly being modified to address

new phenomena and particularly surprises. This was the case, for instance, when we

chose to study the supplier/user nexus and the complex web of relations that exist


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between them, which, in turn, alerted us to the important role of industry analysts.

This group of experts has since become a major focus of our subsequent work.

The biography approach is a novel and ambitious one. There are two further aspects

worth mentioning that have meant we have been able to conduct such a study. First,

this is our historical perspective, facilitated by the fact we have been able to revisit

findings and material from research conducted over the last two decades ago now as

well as studies carried out more recently. In terms of the former, this was the 1987-

1991 study of CAPM conducted by Fleck, Webster and Williams. This was research

funded under the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Programme in

Information and Communication Technology (PICT) where we were amongst the first

social scientists to investigate the shaping of earlier types of packaged enterprise

solutions and their effects on organisations. In terms of the latter, Pollock and

Cornford conducted a 1998-2001 a further ESRC study of an ERP implementation

where they followed the system rollout over a three period in one particular

organisation. This has meant in our current study our 2003-2007 ESRC research

grant on theBiography and Evolution of Standard Software Packages conducted by

Pollock and Williams - we have been able to contrast our research and assessment at

the time with the state of the field as it has panned out today. Importantly, this has

allowed us to highlight the interesting linkages that current day technologies share

with their older predecessors, and to analyse current developments in light of this

historical knowledge. One of the unusual things this historical insight has permitted us

to do, for instance, is to be able to criticise the now well-rehearsed historical account

of the emergence of ERP systems. As the conclusions of the 1990 Eindhoven Group

workshop demonstrate, the future direction of the technology was far from clear at the

time. We have thus been able to trace (some aspects of) the complicated rise of the

ERP system.

Second, in conducting our analysis, we have also drawn upon parallel research by our

Edinburgh colleague DAdderio (2004), doctoral research by Grimm (2008) and

Wang (2007a), who through ethnographic research have looked at the birth and

evolution of major software packages through contemporary and retrospective study.

Grimm conducted a participant observation of one of the worlds leading software

producers (some of which we include in Chapter Eight). Wang traced the birth and


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evolution of the Chinese national champion selling organisational Product Data

Management (PDM) technologies in the Construction sector. We might suggest that it

is only because we can draw upon this distinctive historical and interdisciplinary

knowledge base brought together in our wider research team that we can write this

book. This suggests that studying the biography of the enterprise solution is

increasingly a team task and not something that can be done alone or though a single

study (cf. Burawoy et al. 2000; Koch 2007).

Two other final points merit attention. Firstly, is that we do not include in the book an

implementation study; nor do we look at the effects of enterprise-wide systems on

adopting organisations and users. We do not see this omission as a limitation. Instead,

it represents one of the choices we have made in the current study. Much has already

been much written about ERP implementation in the sociological and information

system literature; some of which is reviewed in Chapters One through to Three. We

have taken this study and this book as an opportunity to explore other aspects of the

career of the packaged enterprise systems, which we think are of equal importance but

have had nowhere near similar attention. Secondly, we have chosen to mask the

identity of the organisations we have studied, except in one case where we thought it

necessary to talk specifically about the work of one particular actor. This is The

Gartner Group where we saw them to be of such significance, as well uniquely

identifiable, that it would have made little sense to attempt to anonymize them.

Structure of this book

We begin in Chapter One by introducing the recent history of the software package

industry. Here longstanding concerns about the availability, price and quality of

software surfaced in an episode which became known as the software crisis and

which led to the reorganisation of software production and ultimately the rise of

packaged software. We also review the main phases of the software package lifecycle

- from design through to procurement, implementation, use and post-implementation.

Whilst this first chapter is primarily descriptive, the following two are conceptual in

nature. Chapter Two engages in detail with debates within STS about some of the

major frameworks through which technologies and innovation have been

conceptualised, including ideas about how to theorise the relationship between


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technology and society. Chapter Three is where we set out the Biography of Artefacts

Framework. This is followed by the various empirical chapters.

There are five empirical chapters in all, which are organised around interrelated

themes. The first two, which closely build on each other, study the tension between

software as a solution to specific user problems and as a generic product. This is, to

use the framework we are developing, the biography of aparticular innovation and of

a wider product. As we will show these are two different views on the same

technology, highlighting often-contrasting needs and demands from the different

actors involved. More specifically, Chapter Four describes the development of the

new ERP module we call Campus built by one of the largest software package

suppliers in the world. We describe how many users agreed to act as pilot sites for the

new software predicated on the belief that they could influence the shaping of the

package (through allowing the software to be designed around their organisation).

Once the supplier attempted to make their product more generic, however, the user

organisations experienced a loss of control as their specific features were designed

out of the system. Unsurprisingly, this provided something of a strain on the

relationships between the suppliers and user organisations (which is the theme of the

chapter).

Chapter Five continues to analyse how package suppliers manage the tension

between designing a module for a group of specific users and, at the same time, a set

of wider yet unknown users (the potential global market). Taking the view of the

software producer this time, we compare two software producers targeting a similar

sector. We investigate how both take decisions about product design and markets as

well as how these influence the uptake and eventual fit of the package. From a more

conceptual point of view the chapter attempts to describe a set of revealed strategies

by which suppliers produce software that embodies characteristics common across

many users; what we term generification and generification work.

The next two chapters, which also closely build on each other, shift our focus away

from specific innovations and products and towards the wider technological field

that constitutes software packages. Through this term, we address how certain ideas


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about software packages achieve currency and become resources for others (and also

how these ideas can change over time). In this sense, the broader technological field

can be thought to possess a biography as ideas about software packages and their

organisational benefits change (but evolve much more slowly than that of particular

artefacts within that field). What interests us in these two chapters is how the

technological field surrounding generic software comes to be constituted by certain

key players and are also sustained by the activities of the wider communities of

organisational users. Chapter Six considers the issue of procurement. Procurement is

interesting because it is the process by which a potential adopting organisation

becomes bound up with the biography of a particular artefact. This process moreover

turns out to involve high levels of ambiguity, as there is often a lack of reliable

information about the capacities and performance of packages and their fit with the

particular requirements of the would-be adopter. Those procuring solutions are often

faced with intensive marketing efforts and may see more detailed and comparable

information by organising beauty contests from different package suppliers. We

show how the procurement team within one large organisation laboriously attempt to

analyse and compare various offerings so that an effective and accountable choice

can be made.

What is interesting about procurement, as we explore more fully in the next chapter, is

that it takes place on a highly complex terrain, involving various actors (organisation

members, expert intermediaries and suppliers) who influence the practice of choosing

between packages, and thus help constitute the market of technology artefacts and the

field of technological practice. Chapter Seven vividly demonstrates how there are new

kinds of intermediaries emerging and the work thy do in shaping expectations about

the nature of software packages as well as constituting the markets for constantly

changing supplier offerings. In particular, we look at the work of industry analysts

and the construction of one of the most infamous of market analysis tools - the Magic

Quadrant. This device is widely circulated amongst the IT community so as to

compare and rank vendors according to a number of highly contested evaluative

criteria. These assessments include intangible properties such as supplier

competence and vision. Given that potential adopters are drawn to assess the

reputation of vendors and products during procurement, we find these tools play an

important role in mediating choices. Their assessments appear to play a role in


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allowing user organisations to make comparisons between the proliferations of

offerings. In other words, what was once a highly uncertain terrain is now becoming

more organised (and we highlight the role of industry analysts in drawing and

redrawing boundaries around the technological field).

Chapter Eight is the final empirical discussion and takes us inside the offices of

SoftCo. Here we view the software through the lens of a supplier attempting to

manage its wide family of generic products through one particular moment in the

software package lifecycle - the support function (the process by which the supplier

resolves the technical problems its users experience when installing solutions). The

supplier is faced with the difficult problem of supporting the systems of its massively

large and highly distributed user base. It has recently moved from what might be

described as a territorial model of support to one that is a predominately online

(what we describe as a globalised face-to-portal form of support). We describe the

novel organisational form that has been put in place, which includes a global network

of labs and sophisticated ICTs, and show the complex workings of this network as

well as the various strategies developed by the supplier to lift out technical problems

from out of their local context and bring them back to its labs.

Chapter Nine attempts to both bring together the main concepts developed in the book

as well as build towards a more general discussion of how we might develop our

conception of software packages. The reader should be aware that each of the

arguments developed in the empirical chapters gradually build upon each other. They

reflect the (roughly chronological) development of both our empirical and conceptual

analysis. Each chapter develops diverse themes most of which (but not all) contribute

to the overall discussion of the biography of the enterprise system. In this sense, the

book is best read from beginning to end. The empirical chapters are to some extent

self-contained in that each discusses its own theoretical starting point, empirical

setting and detailed methodology and presents conclusions. In this respect, the reader

should be aware that the final conclusions presented in Chapter Nine do not attempt to

recapitulate all the arguments developed in the empirical chapters. The various

chapters, particularly the empirical ones, reflect our own intellectual journey and

process of discovery. The careful reader will notice how our analytical lens develops


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changing its focus and (hopefully) growing in sophistication and acuity, as we

progress and trace out the biography of the enterprise system.

1 To some extent, this has already happened. As we will show many of the more influential accounts of enterprise-wide systems

now stem from American Business Schools.

2 This broad area of work might in some places also come under alternative designations like Social Informatics (see for

instance Kling [2007]).

3 We might call the seemingly impossible project of developing the generic solution as akin to the flying bumblebee problem.

According to calculations and presumptions from theoretical physics, bumblebees should not be able to fly (this is despite the

frequent observation of flying bumblebees).

4 SAP is the biggest ERP supplier, followed by Oracle (which in 2003 took over Peoplesoft which in turn had just acquired JD

Edwards the next two largest players in the ERP market). Between them, they account for over 60% of the market, though there

are a number of other challengers (Brunellii 2006).

how sap conquered the world

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