Let us look at the difference between the issues of IT adoption in social media and businesses and why IT adoption is such a big issues in businesses.
- Facebook users are voluntary. There is no compulsion. So people join at their own will, only people who are interested join and they too participate as and when they want, not compulsorily on a regular basis. In companies, those who have to use it have no choice not to use it and they have to use it compulsorily for all transactions. They have to use it for transacting business. Facebook will be deemed to be successful even if 1% of the possible users use it, whereas an ERP in a company cannot succeed unless 100% of its expected users use it. If even one invoice, which is supposed to be raised using the ERP is raised manually or outside the ERP system, the ERP system is rendered inaccurate and unreliable which can lead to complete failure.
- Use of Facebook does not involve a process and is not dependent on others. An individual does an atomic activity like posting a comment or uploading a photo, etc. which is an independent activity not dependent on any one else’s activities. Whereas in ERP, it is a team activity. Other people are affected by your accuracy and timeliness of usage. For instance if a new employee record is not added accurately and timely in an ERP, the employee may not be able to mark the attendance, the transport department may not be able to provide transport to the employee and so on. The business processes are long and distributed over several people. When there are interdependent teams involved in implementation, there are management problems and challenges.
- There is more need of managing change, regulating and guiding. There are more managerial and organizational issues in ERP implementation.
- ERPs are not so user friendly systems like web based applications meant for masses. ERPs were not designed to be so user friendly as they were not designed for masses.
- There is no fear of loss of job, power in case of facebook. In businesses, the sword of loss of job or loss of control always hangs on their necks, rightly or wrongly. This results in organizational politics, inherent resistance and stress.
- Facebook does not need master data. ERP needs a huge, accurate master data to be first created which is an extra burden and extremely painful activity. Often errors in data misleads people into believing that the system is misbehaving and the blame game starts.
In a nutshell, when people are involved in a collaborative, interdependent process, there is bound to be disruption, resistance and stress. It is not so easy as using facebook or twitter.