As ERP installations mature and strategic benefits become realized (Holland and Light 2001), it is a practical matter that ERP upgrades and migrations become necessary. An expanded ERP research focus should include investigation of mature stages of ERP use, and look particularly at continual improvement through process reengineering in mature ERP installations.
Business process knowledge acquisition is a critical part of the educational effort needed in the ERP change management process. Recent innovations in business education seek to improve business process knowledge growth using real-time business simulations utilizing hands-on ERP usage (Léger 2006; Cronan et al. 2011). Business process knowledge is a part of the core knowledge base supporting ERP knowledge. ERP change management and educational research should look beyond ERP transaction skills (often the primary focus of traditional ERP training) to address understanding of other important business context factors, including business process knowledge, interdependent/cooperative tasks, and cross-functional problem-solving skills (Kang and Santhanam 2003). Research into knowledge acquisition in the ERP context can benefit from investigating novel knowledge measurement techniques such as knowledge structures (i.e., mental models) (Schmidt et al. 2011) and processing mining techniques. Future research directions should also utilize innovations in IS research techniques such as neuro-IS methods, which measure underlying physiological mental processing while using information systems (Pavlou et al. 2007; Dimoka and Davis 2008).
Process mining is a nascent approach to business process analysis which utilizes event logs of systems that support processes, especially workflow systems like ERP, which log numerous transactions and other events (Song and van der Aalst 2008). A primary goal of process mining is to extract knowledge from these logs to support a detailed investigation of real business operations. Process mining research is emerging as a way to improve understanding of actual business processes and as a means for objective observation of actual system activities in an audit situation. Emergent process mining approaches offer promising avenues to address the need to reveal actual process execution (Jansen-Vullers et al. 2006), uncover underlying informal organizational structures (Song and van der Aalst 2008), and possibly to even project the impact of ERP configuration on various process activities (Dreiling et al. 2005).