System Characteristics, Perceived Benefits, Individual Differences and Use Intentions: A Survey of Decision Support Tools of ERP Systems

Limited research has considered the value derived from using enterprise resource panning (ERP) systems for decision making support. This paper aims to evaluate the impact of a set of individual differences, system characteristics, and perceived benefits of the system, on the intentions to use ERP systems for decision support. A field study was used to collect data from managers working in Bahraini enterprises that use ERP systems. The results indicate that individual differences concerning age, gender, level of education, and even computer self efficacy did not influence intentions of using the decision tools of ERP systems. The only individual difference that showed significant influence is the degree of knowledge of the system. In addition, both perceived shared benefits and system characteristics had significant influence on the intention to use the system for decision support tasks, through perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. The paper discusses the implications of these findings and ends with possible extensions of the study.