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1. Introduction
Cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a significant part of an extensively long series of cloud services that include online personal data storage, companies-based services (e.g. mailing system and cloud-based modules), cloud virtual machines and other cloud services that are based on the online cloud computing platform. Cloud ERP offers diverse beneficial characteristics for different organizations especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as they are considered the vast majority of Cloud ERP users (Wrycza, 2011). According to Wrycza (2011, p. 45), the implementation of Cloud ERP enables SME to compete with larger corporations through employing an inexpensive, advanced and rival ERP system. Besides, SMEs mainly implement Cloud ERP due to its flexible accessibility, easiness of control and most significantly its minimized licensing, maintenance and general investment costs (Lenart, 2011; Wrycza, 2011).
Although there are tremendous benefits of the use of Cloud ERP, many organizations remain cautious about the implementation of Cloud ERP. Paradoxically, these cautions are resulted from a number of unanswered questions. One of these questions is: How could the company be experientially benefited from adopting Cloud ERP? Moreover, many decision-makers in organizations are doubtful and confused about Cloud ERP's characteristics, as they do not have adequate and comprehensive information about Cloud ERP system. Furthermore, some organizations may have certain misconceptions about the consequences of the Cloud ERP implementation. For instance, some managers might think that using online-based ERP system like Cloud ERP would endanger the security and privacy of their data. Additionally, some might believe that converting to Cloud ERP may lead to increased possibility of system slowdowns and disconnections thus hindering the organization's overall performance and efficiency. Hence, it is of great interest to the current study to examine the role of the implementation of the Cloud ERP system in the decision-making process of organizations and provide evidence on the benefits and challenges of the use of Cloud ERP in order to offer managers an authentic reference that can be used in the decision-making process of their organizations (Lenart, 2011).
A bulk of literature has extensively examined the role of the implementation of Cloud ERP on the decision-making process in organizations and reached to some evidence comprising the benefits and challenges of the use of Cloud ERP. However, existing studies...