A new firm-level Information Technology classification model: Theory building & empirical analysis

A new firm-level Information Technology classification model: Theory building & empirical analysis

Illes, F.F.

Verbraeck, A. (mentor)
Zand, F. (mentor)
Van Beers, C. (mentor)

Technology, Policy and Management

Technology, Strategy & Entrepreneurship

Management of Technology

2009-12-03

Information Technology systems are used to cover many functions and they fulfil various roles within an organization. Corporate IT spending and investments have constantly increased since the plunge it took in 2001, and still there is much uncertainty on how exactly these systems influence the business and impact business performance. The large number and variety of IT systems and the lack of understanding of their effects in the firm makes the decision of the proper system to invest in a difficult one. Many have studied the value creation process of IT systems, but the results of these studies are not conclusive and often contradictory, which is why there is still a lot of research that needs to be done in this field. This study contributes to the IT value creation literature. By analyzing the mechanisms through which IT affects business processes by means of an extensive literature study, a new IT classification model is created based on the roles IT plays in a firm. The analysis shows that IT systems fulfil various roles in a firm, that through these roles IT affects several intermediate firm processes, and these intermediate processes in turn have an impact on firm performance. Unlike previous IT classifications which were made to be used in a specific context or to study specific outcomes, the classification that is created in this paper is a high level, general classification model that can be used to study different IT effects in various contexts. Besides an extensive literature study, interviews are conducted with IT managers in various firms and IT business consultants to get a deeper understanding of how IT systems effect firm processes and eventually business performance. To validate the model and get empirical information on which IT systems to adopt in which firm situation, empirical analysis is performed. The effects of the use of IT systems and sectoral differences between the manufacturing and construction sector are analyzed, as well as the use of IT systems with different firm and market characteristics of manufacturing firms. In short, the empirical analysis shows that: - Firms in the manufacturing sector seem to benefit more from the use of a customer relationship management system than firms in the construction sector. - For manufacturing firms with a wide customer base the use of a customer relationship management system seems to be a necessity if not advantageous. - For manufacturing firms that procure primarily from international suppliers the use of a supply chain management system seems to be a necessity if not advantageous. - For manufacturing firms with highly educated employees the use of an enterprise document management system seems to be a necessity if not advantageous. - For large manufacturing firms (more than 50 employees) the use of an enterprise resource management system seems to be a necessity if not advantageous.

IT classification
IT value creation

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:7b205677-0009-4a53-8afd-90333986a42f

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2009 Illes, F.F.