Feature-Based Reuse in the ERP Domain: An Industrial Case Study

ERP system vendors need to customize their products according to the domain-specific requirements of their customers. Systematic reuse of features and related ERP product customizations would improve software quality and save implementation time. In our previous research, we have developed a tool-based approach supporting feature-based reuse of ERP product customizations. Our tool environment automatically infers reusable features from requirements and their associated implementation artefacts. Furthermore, it allows domain experts to search for features based on natural language requirements descriptions representing the needs of new customers. Matching features can be automatically deployed to a new ERP product. In this paper, we present an industrial evaluation of our tool-based approach conducted together with an Austrian SME. A domain expert used our approach to identify matching features for 20 randomly selected requirements for new customer products. The expert identified matching features for 17 of the 20 requirements. We compared the time needed to identify and deploy the candidate features to the time required to implement the requirements from scratch. We found that, in total, over 60% implementation time can be saved by applying our reuse approach in this case study.