The impact of perceived accounting benefits on the enterprise resource planning success: The mediating role of effective system use

Abstract

In the past decades, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have become increasingly automated, particularly for routine management accounting tasks. However, there has been little research investigating the accounting benefits of adopting ERP systems. This study investigates the role of perceived accounting benefits in ERP success. Drawing on Juran's principle of 'fitness for use,' this study establishes a framework that captures how perceived accounting benefits influence effective system use, which, in turn, enhances enterprise success. Using Partial Least Squares - Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) with survey data collected from 120 enterprises in Vietnam that have implemented ERP, our findings provide strong support for the predicted positive effect of perceived accounting benefits on enterprise success, and for the hypothesis that this relationship is fully mediated by effective system use. This study is novel for two reasons. First, it is one of the first attempts to provide empirical evidence that effective system use and enterprise success are valuable outcomes of accounting benefits perceived to be gained from the use of ERP systems. Second, it discovers and demonstrates that effective system use is the most appropriate system-use concept in the present enterprise systems-related context, a topic that remains under discussion in the literature.