Determinants of Cloud ERP Adoption in Saudi Arabia: an Empirical Study

Cloud based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have emerged as solutions to all the difficulties encountered by conventional ERP system. It provides flexibility, adaptability, and cost efficiency. It requires low upfront investments and can rapidly be deployed. Different private and public organization in developed countries have already realized the benefit of cloud ERP and implemented it to improve overall efficiency and quality of services. However, the adoption rate of cloud ERP in developing countries such as Saudi Arabia is still at the beginning stage with not many adopters. Side by side, not much research has been done to investigate the factors that influence the implementation of cloud ERP. So, it is essential to analyze the factors that affect the adoption of cloud ERP in Saudi Arabia. This paper will examine various factors that affect the adoption of cloud ERP in different private and public organization in Saudi Arabia by combining the two widely applied IT theories such as Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework and Diffusion of Innovation theory. This paper will also analyze the performance of cloud base ERP with traditional ERP systems. Avenues for future research will also be suggested.