Enterprise System Maturity - Past, Present and Future: A Case Study of Botswana

The early stages of computerisation were pre-occupied with managing activities such as operations, programming, data collection etc. This then developed into information systems. Such systems include: customer management systems, financial systems, human resource systems, business intelligence systems, asset management systems, waste management systems, document management systems, workflow management systems, and hundreds of other systems. In recent years, these systems are being integrated with each other to such an extent that it is oftentimes necessary to view them, not as hundreds of different systems, but one single system comprising of several systems, often referred to as enterprise-wide information system. Many organizations however have encountered difficulties when attempting to modify enterprise resource planning systems to their business operations. These factors led to the growth of Enterprise Architecture. This paper focuses on studying the trend in the development of the Botswana Enterprise system. In order to trace the Botswana maturity story through literature the question the researcher set out to answer was: How have Enterprise systems evolved over time, and where is it now? These questions will be answered with insights from the academic literature using online databases. The study uses Gartner model to analyse the Botswana story. The planning and implementation approaches adopted by the nation explicitly explain how the development agenda of a country if followed through can impact positively on the country's development.