Over the recent years, globalization has resulted in an exponential growth in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Earlier, offline ERP has been used widely among the industrialists including small scale units, but due to recent penetration of web-based ERP, scholars have questioned on its effectiveness in comparison to offline. Thus the present review summarizes on benefits and weakness and critical success factors that impact SMEs performance in specific to India i.e. the effectiveness of web-based or offline ERP systems was observed. (Here in both online and web-based and offline or offline has been used interchangeably). For this identification, the present study adopted the secondary data collection method where various research articles were reviewed. From the review it is evident that both web-based and offline ERP system has it pros and cons. In the aspect of critical success factors involve include reduction in development time, reduction of productivity cost, low inventory overhead, fewer resources, improved procurement, transparency, improved supply chains time, improved response time in market conditions, better use of resources, customer satisfaction and ease of global reach influence the firm performance of SMEs. However, it is observed in this review, web-based ERP systems are more efficient than offline ERP based on the factors like Scalability, Maintainability, Portability and Return-On-Investment (ROI). Offline ERP system are also effective for firm performance, though where time frame for implementation and cost factor are observed to be minimum. Hence it is concluded that compared to offline ERP system, the web based ERP has significant effect in enhancing the firm performance. Therefore, this review suggested that the SMEs and other larger organisations may apply web-based ERP system to achieve success in present competitive world
