title: Nurturing clients' trust to encourage engagement success during the customization of ERP systems
abstract: Customization is a crucial, lengthy, and costly aspect in the successful implementation of ERP systems, and has, accordingly, become a major specialty of many vendors and consulting companies. The study examines how such companies can increase their clients' perception of engagement success through increased client trust that is brought about through responsive and dependable customization. Survey data from ERP customization clients show that, as hypothesized, clients' trust influenced their perception of engagement success with the company. The data also show that clients' trust in the customization company was increased when the company behaved in accordance with client expectations by being responsive, and decreased when the company behaved in a manner that contradicted these expectations by not being dependable. Responses to an open-ended question addendum attached to the survey corroborated the importance of responsiveness and dependability. Implications for customization companies and research on trust are discussed
keyphrases: engagement success customization ERP systems vendors consulting companies client trust dependability enterprise resource planning systems perceived responsiveness MRP II implementation integrity benevolence