What New ERP Research Tells Us About Adoption

ERP programs are generally good at measuring implementation. They are far less good at demonstrating adoption.

Programs track configuration, testing, data migration, training completion, communications and go-live readiness. These measures tell leaders whether the project is progressing. They do not necessarily demonstrate that the organization is adopting the new system.

Recent research provides a clearer picture of what influences ERP adoption. Across several studies, four factors consistently emerge:

• The system must support how people perform their work.
• Stakeholders must have meaningful participation in the transformation.
• Leaders must create the capacity and conditions required for change.
• Adoption must be measured through evidence of behavior and performance.

Together, these findings challenge the idea that adoption can be demonstrated by completing a standard list of change-management activities.

Work compatibility predicts usage

A 2026 study of 139 experienced ERP users found that work compatibility was the strongest predictor of actual system usage. Perceived usefulness and supporting conditions also mattered, but employees’ attitudes toward using the system emerged as an important improvement opportunity (Radić et al., 2026).

An ERP system can be available, stable and relatively easy to navigate while still conflicting with how employees must complete their responsibilities. When the system does not fit operational reality, users create workarounds. They rely on spreadsheets, duplicate information, bypass required steps or continue using legacy processes.

These behaviors are often described as resistance or insufficient training. In many cases, they are evidence of misalignment between the system and the work.

Training can help employees understand a new process. It cannot permanently correct a process that is unnecessarily difficult, incomplete or incompatible with operational requirements.

Organizations therefore need to measure more than logins and training completion. They should examine:

• Whether critical tasks are completed entirely within the ERP
• Where users leave the prescribed process
• How much duplicate entry or rework occurs
• Which spreadsheets and legacy tools remain in use
• Whether employees believe the system supports their responsibilities
• How transaction errors and completion times change after go-live

This is the difference between measuring system access and measuring adoption.

Participation must include influence

Research into stakeholder-driven ERP implementations shows that different stakeholder groups do not define success in the same way. Executives may focus on cost, standardization and strategic value. IT may prioritize stability, integration and security. Process owners may focus on control and consistency. End users are more likely to judge the system through usability, workload and its fit with daily operations.

A 2026 SAP implementation study involving the Technical University of Berlin and nine additional higher-education institutions found that early and sustained stakeholder involvement was associated with stronger perceived alignment and acceptance. Predominantly top-down approaches were more likely to intensify resistance and usability concerns (Fattah-Weil, Bender and Gronau, 2026).

A single readiness score can hide these differences.

Participation should not be confused with attendance. Employees are not meaningfully engaged simply because they attended a town hall, received a communication or completed a survey. Participation becomes valuable when stakeholders can:

• Explain how the change will affect their work
• Contribute operational knowledge
• Test realistic business scenarios
• Raise risks without being dismissed
• See how their feedback influenced a decision
• Help shape the support required for their teams

Research into digital transformation further suggests that employee sentiment influences cognitive and emotional predispositions toward change, which can affect willingness to participate. Participation cannot simply be manufactured through communications, training, champions and incentives without considering how employees interpret the transformation (Abhari, 2025).

Engagement is not communication volume. It is the quality of stakeholder participation and the degree to which that participation improves the transformation.

Readiness is more than a positive attitude

A 2026 quantitative study of ERP implementations across New Zealand government agencies found that top-management support was the strongest predictor of reported implementation success. Change-management readiness and user training were also significant predictors. Organizational culture was not statistically significant within the study’s tested model (Wijetunge and Du, 2026).

This does not mean culture is irrelevant. It means culture should be diagnosed rather than assumed.

Readiness should test whether the organization has the conditions required to adopt the change:

• Are leaders making and reinforcing the necessary decisions?
• Have employees been given time to learn and adjust?
• Are process owners accountable for adoption outcomes?
• Is training based on actual role and process needs?
• Are managers prepared to support employees after go-live?
• Does the organization have enough capacity to absorb the change?
• Are post-go-live ownership and support responsibilities clear?

A workforce may understand and support a transformation while still lacking the time, capability, authority or operational support required to adopt it. That is a readiness gap but not necessarily an attitude problem.

Sentiment needs a baseline

The ADP Research Employee Motivation and Commitment Index declined for the fourth consecutive month in August 2026. The index fell three points to 126 and stood 23 points below its August 2025 peak. Knowledge workers, repetitive-task workers and public-administration employees all experienced notable declines (Hayes and Northup, 2026).

This research is not ERP-specific, but it has an important implication for transformation programs: employee sentiment does not exist in a project vacuum. A decline in an ERP sentiment survey may reflect project problems. It may also reflect workload, organizational uncertainty, leadership changes, economic concerns or competing initiatives.

Programs should therefore distinguish among:

1. 1General employee motivation and commitment
2. 2The organization’s overall capacity for change
3. 3Confidence in the specific ERP transformation
4. 4Willingness and ability to perform required adoption behaviors

Without these distinctions, project teams may prescribe more communications or training when the underlying issue is workload, process design, leadership credibility or wider organizational fatigue. Sentiment is a useful signal. It is not adoption itself.

Post-go-live support must reduce dependency

SAP reported that Hapag-Lloyd uses 265 change ambassadors to support approximately 4,000 SAP users across more than 140 countries. Another organization allocated 4.3% of its SAP contract budget to change management. The cases also emphasized in-workflow support, locally trusted representatives and the development of key users through workshops, testing and business scenarios (Jenewein, 2026).

These examples should not be treated as universal benchmarks. They are vendor-selected cases rather than controlled studies. However, they demonstrate that major transformations are treating adoption as a resourced operating capability, not as a short communication and training effort.

Effective hypercare should therefore do more than resolve tickets. It should identify:

• Repeated workflow confusion
• Non-compliant process paths
• Tasks with high error or abandonment rates
• Roles requiring additional practice
• Missing or ineffective support content
• Process and system problems incorrectly classified as user issues

Hypercare is succeeding when support dependency declines because capability and process performance are improving — not merely because tickets are being closed faster.

Adoption requires an operating discipline

Under ABEN’s Adoption Formula™, adoption is managed through three connected pillars. Engagement establishes participation, ownership and informed commitment. Enablement builds the capability and support required to perform in the new environment. Evidence demonstrates whether behaviors, usage and business performance are actually changing.

These pillars should operate throughout the Adoption Project Phases — Mobilize, Discover, Design, Validate, Launch and Sustain — not as activities concentrated immediately before go-live.

The questions ERP programs usually ask

• Did we send the communications?
• Did users complete training?
• Did we conduct a readiness assessment?

The stronger questions

• Can people perform the changed work?
• Are they following the intended processes?
• Where are workarounds appearing?
• Which stakeholder groups remain misaligned?
• What evidence supports the readiness conclusion?
• Is post-go-live support reducing dependency or merely resolving repeated problems?
• Are adoption behaviors producing the expected operational outcomes?

A technically successful go-live introduces a system. Adoption occurs when the organization can use that system as the normal, capable and sustained way of working.

References

1. Abhari, K. (2025). Employee Participation in Digital Transformation: From Digitalization Sentiment to Transformation Predisposition. Information & Management, 62(8), 104212. View source
2. Fattah-Weil, J., Bender, B., and Gronau, N. (2026). Stakeholder-Driven ERP Implementation in German Higher Education: Key Challenges and Adoption Factors. Information Systems and e-Business Management. View source
3. Hayes, M., and Northup, J. (2026). Employee Sentiment Weakened in August. ADP Research. View source
4. Jenewein, T. (2026). AI Adoption and SAP Transformation: What Customers Report from Practice. SAP News. View source
5. Radić, A., Arsić, S., Nikolić, Đ., et al. (2026). What Are the Key Drivers in ERP System Usage? An Empirical Analysis Using an Integrated Methodological Approach. Future Business Journal, 12, Article 215. View source
6. Wijetunge, A. T. D. S., and Du, H. (2026). Navigating the Public Sector: A Quantitative Investigation of Organisational Factors Influencing ERP Implementation in New Zealand. Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy.