This article focuses on the role of Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and IT in enterprise resource planning (ERP). Critical success factors and reasons for failure in ERP implementations has been widely researched. The difficulties experienced in ERP implementations and with business value are not atypical of most IT projects, especially when they are large and complex, expensive, take over a year or more to install, use new technology and impact significantly on the organizational culture and existing business processes. ERP software has particularly lent itself to the notion of being a packaged total solution to a range of technical and business problems. A scenario has been seen where senior business executives have taken the significant decisions without meaningful CIO and IT input, either because they see ERP as too important and enterprise-wide for the IT function to be left with the responsibility or because the IT function has a poor track record and ERP is seen, somewhat like large-scale IT outsourcing.