Custom Development as an Alternative for ERP Adoption by SMEs: An Interpretive Case Study

There have been few studies of the adoption of custom-developed enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. An interpretive case study of a SME in the agri-food industry was thus conducted to analyze this phenomenon. The study shows that custom ERP seems to represent a credible alternative for ERP adoption by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and that to minimize risk at the adoption stage, a SME can proceed in a rather intuitive and unstructured manner, based however upon certain principles, policies, and practices.