For decades, organisations have purchased and implemented enterprise systems in order to create value. Enterprise systems are solutions that offer a set of functionalities that may not correspond to all needs and requirements of an organisation. Therefore, organisations use several systems to comply with their business needs. In order for systems that are used to be as efficient as possible and to function throughout an organisation, system integrations are necessary.

Enterprise systems and system integrations are currently in high demand. Software consultants play a decisive role when organisations implementing enterprise systems and system integrations, due to their contribution of skills, knowledge and resources. However, system integrations are not without challenges and can be complex and difficult to achieve.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis in informatics is to identify challenges of a system integration between an enterprise system and a secondary system from the perspective of software consultants.

The research methodology for this thesis is a qualitative method. The data is collected in two parts, one by interviews and a second by questionnaires. The interviews are conducted on two separate occasions, with two hand-picked high experienced software consultants. The interviews are performed with an interview guide consisting of open semi-structured questions. The questionnaires are distributed at a company where the whole population of high experienced software consultants are included. The questionnaires contains primarily of open-ended questions. 

A literature review discusses material regarding the background and purpose, a research model is developed from previous research related to the topic. The research model is a tool and a guide in the analyse chapter, used to examine the empirical outcome from the interviews and questionnaires.

One conclusion is that challenges occur in every stage of a system integration project and need to be dealt with in a proper manner. The software consultants that participate in this thesis recognise several, different challenges. The main challenges identified concern the areas of requirements, management, communication, technical, training, documentation and resistance.

There are always challenges with a system integration project between an enterprise system and a secondary system. A recommendation is to do further research, both regarding the challenges identified and to explore other challenges.