The theme of this research is to establish how South African companies evaluate the benefits of a capital investment, in terms of ERP implementations, to the organisation. The question of whether determinable value can be quantified and the methods used to calculate such value is explored. A search is conducted for critical success factors for successful ERP implementations, key metrics used for monitoring results, and the approach of South African companies to determining benefits. The research is designed to establish what post purchase analyses of completed projects are conducted and what percentage of completed implementations are considered successful in the South African environment, as well as the possible reasons for those successes and failures. The research consists of firstly a qualitative study of the goals of value creation of ERP decisions, which included a couple of interviews with IT and Process Engineering consultants to form a basis of knowledge for why companies implement ERP systems in the first place, followed by a quantitative descriptive study of the implementation success factors and post implementation analysis, by means of a survey of South African companies. The outcome of the research shows that ERP in South Africa has matured to a level where the majority of projects are judged by the key decision makers to be successful, in contrast to expectations created by the literature review performed. It also highlights that, in the capital budgeting decision making processes followed by companies of different sizes, qualitative factors play a slightly bigger role than quantitative factors in the motivation of an ERP implementation. In addition, this research concludes that companies who identify a clear business value goal with the proposed ERP implementation, ensures buy-in from top management, perform proper planning before embarking on the project, as well as follow some kind of rigorous measurement framework, experience higher levels of ERP success than those who do not. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Software development is an area in which companies not only need to keep up with the latest technology, but they additionally need to continuously increase their productivity to stay competitive in the industry. One company currently facing these challenges is Storytel - one of the strongest players on the Swedish audiobook market - with about a fourth of all employees involved with software development, and a rapidly growing workforce. With the purpose of understanding how the Storytel Tech Department is performing, this thesis maps Storytel’s productivity defined through the Four Key Metrics - Deployment Frequency, Delivery Lead Time, Mean Time To Restore and Change Fail Rate. A classification is made into which performance category (Low, Medium, High, Elite) the Storytel Tech Department belongs to through a deep-dive into the raw system data existing at Storytel, mainly focusing on the case management system Jira. A survey of the Tech Department was conducted, to give insights into the connection between human and technical factors influencing productivity (categorized into Culture, Environment, and Process) and estimated productivity. Along with these data collections, interviews with Storytel employees were performed to gather further knowledge about the Tech Department, and to understand potential bottlenecks and obstacles. All Four Key Metrics could be determined based on raw system data, except the metric Mean Time To Restore which was complemented by survey estimates. The generalized findings of the Four Key Metrics conclude that Storytel can be minimally classified as a ‘medium’ performer. The factors, validated through factor analysis, found to have an impact on the Four Key Metrics were Generative Culture, Efficiency (Automation and Shared Responsibility) and Number of Projects. Lastly, the major bottlenecks found were related to Architecture, Automation, Time Fragmentation and Communication. The thesis contributes with interesting findings from an expanding, middle-sized, healthy company in the audiobook streaming industry - but the results can be beneficial for other software development companies to learn from as well. Performing a similar study with a greater sample size, and additionally enabling comparisons between teams, is suggested for future research.