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Maturity models appear as a sequence of levels that together constitute a logical path to follow in order to reach a planned objective. In addition, it is also an important tool that allows organizations to evaluate not only whether the final objective has been achieved, but above all which tools were used to get there (Silva & Marques, 2020).
Regarding ERP systems, their application has become imperative when the organization's goal is to improve organizational performance and increase competitiveness in the economy. ERP systems are able to promote changes in the organizational structure, always with the aim of improving the quality of accounting information, made available to assist the decision making of managers and stakeholders (Santos, 2018). Although ERP systems have been studied for many years, it continues to be a topic of interest to the scientific community of information technologies, because there is a need to adjust and evolve the approach to these systems, from the traditional processes and business lifecycle to the current digital transformation of dynamic processes and organizations (Bender, Bertheau, & Gronau, 2021).
The positive impact on business performance caused by the adoption of current ERP systems continues to be noticed and studied empirically (Alsurayyi & Alsughayer, 2021; Marsudi & Pambudi, 2021; Stoel & Havelka, 2021). An organization can enhance the operational performance of its internal audit department using an integrated effective ERP system (Thottoli, Ahmed, & Thomas, 2022).
In this way, a symbiotic relationship between organizational maturity and the adoption of these systems could be expected, because their adoption can also contribute to increase the maturity of its processes, in particular, and of the organization, in general (Salur & Kattar, 2021). This possible relationship is a subject of potential interest to study and serves as motivation for the study presented in this paper. The combination of two truly relevant topics in the areas of Information Systems and IA, namely ERP Systems and IA Maturity Levels, can therefore be noted.
Thus, the objective of this study is to understand whether there is a relationship between the two themes under study. To achieve this objective, using the Portuguese context, and given the exploratory nature of the study, the following research questions were developed, which lead the research inherent to this paper:
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Q1: What is the degree of full use of all the mechanisms enabled by ERP systems?
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Q2: What are the maturity levels of the Portuguese companies concerning the types of data analysis?
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Q3: What is the degree of use of the ERP systems when carrying out data analysis?
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Q4: What are the maturity levels of the Portuguese companies concerning the execution and reporting?
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Q5: Do the Portuguese companies that presented higher maturity levels use ERP systems?
To achieve the proposed goals, this paper is structured as follows: the Introduction, which contextualize the topics under study and present the motivation for the work, the goals that are intended to achieve and the research questions that support the work and its structure; a theoretical framework both in relation to maturity models as well as ERP Systems are presented in the second section. The third section describes the research methodology. Therefore, the variables, the tool for data collection (questionnaire survey) and the type of data processing performed were defined. Then the analysis of results is carried out in the fourth section. Finally, the fifth section presents the conclusions drawn from the analysis and development of the previous section, the main limitations of this study, and some recommendations for future work.