Background Globalization has made competition fiercer which has created heavy market changes. This has increased the need to achieve competitive advantages in which enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems may provide. Yet, as many as 60-70 percent of ERP implementations can be seen as unsuccessful. Thus, there is a need to understand the critical failure factors (CFFs) present during an implementation. Nonetheless, the subject has received substantial research, however, the focus has been from a generic perspective. While the perspective of the implementers has gained little attention in which this research tries to complement.

Purpose This study aims to deepen the knowledge within the research field of ERP implementations. More specifically, we will study the factors that might hinder a successful ERP implementation from the perspective of the implementers.

Method Our study is a qualitative multiple case study of the perception of the implementers on ERP implementation. In which the empirical findings were gathered through in-depth semi-structured interviews.

Conclusion Our analysis of the empirical findings implies that several pre-known critical failure factors within ERP implementation is of importance. However, new aspects of factors were found in which four factors not mentioned before act as barriers for successful implementations, namely selecting a trustful vendor, agile project management, lack of communication between vendor and customer and minimum modifications until post-implementation phase. All of these factors are present during all of the phases except ‘finding a trustful vendor’ which has to be dealt with already in the preimplementation phase.